


Dearly Departed

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, TW:Drinking, tw:Suicidal thoughts, tw:blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-08-28 03:38:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8430385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: Alex's apartment is haunted. So is she.





	1. Lonesome as a Catacomb

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, everyone!

Alex didn’t mean to make friends with the ghost haunting her apartment, but she does so on accident.

She hadn’t even realized her apartment _had_ a ghost, not until the signs became so obvious that she could no longer ignore them. Never malevolent, and only little things at first. Books, mostly her old anatomy texts, left open on the table and dusted off, and then a notepad, a pen, but no notes scrawled. Unless her drunken stupors had gotten so severe that Alex couldn’t recall plucking an anatomical tome from the shelf, she had no conclusion to derive other than a _something_ was reading her text books.

Then, there were the windows.

Open. All the time. Winds blowing the curtains up to the ceiling, screwing with her apartment climate control. It didn’t matter which shift Alex worked, or how long Alex was gone from the apartment: she goes on her morning run for an hour, windows open; takes the mission somewhere along the Tropic of Cancer, comes back, windows open. She lives in National City in a spartan apartment, a block of one- and two-bedrooms in nearby brick-and-mortar multistories reserved by the DEO for their agents’ ease of clocking-in, but she doesn’t ever really look out much at her cityscape. She might if she had a better outdoor space, but she can’t find it in her to commit to the few evenings it might take to spruce up her meager balcony.

A project like that is beyond her, considering most of her nights have been spent bleary-eyed at the bottom of a bottle, passed out on her couch... at least until the ghost started interfering.

The ghost is a teetotaler.

Alex might make it through half her bottle of whiskey before snoozing in bed, perhaps on the couch (one night after a really bad fight with Kara she hadn’t made it off the kitchen floor before passing out, more than half the container gone), but the next morning she woke to find the whisky bottle (or wine bottle, or vodka, gin, bourbon, etc.) shattered, drops sticky and sick-sweet adhering to the floor, the glass swept neatly away in a dust pan she’s never used aside from the infrequent occasions that Eliza swings by.

Glass brushed through the liquid smeared the alcohol across her floor like blood at a crime scene. When she woke, head throbbing, pressure overwhelming, she felt as though she were waking up at the scene of her own demise, rising from her chalk outline on unsteady legs, wondering if numbing the pain was worth the fear and hostility that grew with her imagined death.

She righted herself and groaned, felt the coolest of whispers brush against her temple like an ice pack meant to soothe her forehead. There was a towel on the floor and the sink had been left running; then a glass of water resting on her table-top, over the counter pain killers laid out for her to cope with the splitting headache, the nausea… but there’s not much a pill can do for the guilt.

Alex has always kept a cap—literal, metaphorical—on her drinking, but the situation with Kara-as-Supergirl is escalating. Alex has been binging more since the revelations brought on by Red Kryptonite, has been going out on riskier missions without Kara, purposely leaving the safety net behind to revel in her own self-reliance, her own competence. Some twisted part of her thinks she’ll feel worthy then. Worthy of _what_ , Alex hasn’t quite figured out yet.

Resentments between herself and Kara are burning hot as dormant coals, waiting for that one prod during a mission, or a debriefing, that will surely burn them both.

That night Alex passed out on the floor was the first night her _shame_ returned, the kind she’d felt after her DUI arrest when she’d first met J’onn-as-Hank and had weathered that honest stare, the one calling her out on her shit because he believed in her, knew she was better.

The shame is similar when she wakes up to a judgmental ghost, taking care of her because Alex doesn’t do well at taking care of herself.

It’s like the ghost expected more from her, though what expectations a ghost might have concerning _Alex_ are rather beyond her mortal thinking. Perhaps the ghost grew weary of the bland, repetitious nights of her coming home late with bad food, or no food, instead ingesting one too many drinks before passing out with the television muted.

Alex wonders how difficult it is to haunt someone who’s unconscious the majority of the time she’s in a haunted setting.

Sometimes, the ghost does stuff just to get her out of bed, on her feet, away from the bottle. Alex has walked in to see the pages of the books turning, fluttering, beckoning her to come look; more often than not, the ghost has flipped through Alex’s old medical texts to symptoms of addiction, depression, and once, fetal alcohol syndrome (as if Alex could contemplate being responsible for someone other than herself at the abysmal moment). On one occasion, her entire bookshelf had been upended, the spines of some really good sources bent to breaking, the pages creased and torn.

Alex had been furious, and immediately set it to rights out of spite. It had taken two hours to dust, categorize, and reshelve them all. To be fair to the ghost, Alex had been needing to overhaul her personal library for some time. She didn’t tell the ghost that, just swiped her Spotify playlist to shuffle and blasted music through the apartment and grumbled as she alphabetized by author’s last name.

One day, the ghost left the windows open during a storm. An uncommon storm, for it rarely rains in National City, but Alex had been absent on a mission for three days and returned to a wet floor and a mildewed carpet, leaves blown into her living area and dirty grime covering the surfaces of her furniture.

So Alex had been forced to _clean_. Never mind that she actually had a day sans alien menaces to sleep, catch up on all the time she’d propped her hazy eyes open with naught but stubborn determination. Alex wanted a drink, wanted to sleep, but instead found herself Hoovering up all the dust collected beneath the coffee table.

At the end of the first two or three weeks of intense ghost involvement, Alex realized she’d been drinking less, cleaning more, and felt, on the whole, significantly less crummy than she had been feeling prior to her haunting. The stress of the job oftentimes got to her, and compounding that stress with crippling addiction was not the best means of coping. For so long, it had taken a bit of outside interference to pull her out of her damaging cycle—her father, J’onn-as-Hank, the burden of Supergirl.

Perhaps the ghost was just another unwanted grace, another someone to save her from herself.

“Thanks,” Alex said to her empty kitchen, packing an apple into a brown paper bag. There was a granola bar, too. She added a funky packet of pretzels and hummus she’d seen a mother juggling three children dump into her cart by the caseload on the one night Alex had sucked it up and adventured through the grocery store.

“You know, with the pills, and the, uh, glass and windows and apartment stuff,” Alex explained, feeling silly for talking to nothing. “If hallucinating means I’ve gotten into the habit of eating something on the food pyramid, I guess going crazy can’t be all bad, right?”

The ghost doesn’t answer her when Alex walks out the door.

That night after her shift, before a late check-in for a stake-out in the warehouse district, Alex finds neat pencil scratches on a blank page in a memo book, set in the middle of her coffee table.

_You are most welcome, Alexandra Danvers. And no, I do not think you are crazy. I also do not think I am dead._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Alex doesn’t mean to start leaving little notes for her ghost, but she needs to figure out what the hell is going on in her apartment.

_You don’t seem very scary, so why are you here?_ she wrote one morning before leaving for work, coming back to an empty apartment, the unfamiliar tingle of excitement for something outside of work or family—something for _herself_ —igniting a scientific curiosity that has been stifled for some time. Her excitement deflated when she checked the notepad, saddened by the lack of a reply. She did not so much drown her sorrows as distract her mind, heading to the kitchen to start on an actual dinner, compliments of her first trip to the grocery in nearly a month:

Ground turkey for burgers. Lettuce, tomato, Swiss cheese, a couple of sautéed mushrooms and onions. Sweet potato fries. Melted butter and brown sugar (plus some cinnamon) for a sweet dipping sauce.

One glass of white wine.

One.

She walked into the liquor store and bought a single serving of a cheap Sauvignon Blanc. Pat behind the counter asked if that was all she wanted. Alex said _yes, thanks, see you around_ , but that wasn’t the truth. She wanted a double bottle cabernet, but knew her ghost would probably pour half its contents on her head while Alex was distracted if she dared to bring more than eight ounces of alcohol across the apartment threshold.

Half an hour after her stint in the kitchen, Alex plates the meal and moves the food to her dining room table, delighted at finding a response on the notepad that had been empty only minutes ago.

_I am unsure_ , the note from the ghost began. _It cannot simply be to keep you from drowning your insecurities in alcohol. I see you’ve exercised some control this evening, and you’re fueling your body with proper nutrition for once. I’m sure your superior will note a difference in your performance during physical training._

Alex takes a bite of her burger and chews thoughtfully, wondering what she should ask next, wondering why she’s not frightened in the least. Perhaps it’s her close proximity to all things alien; the paranormal only seems like the next logical step.

_Why are you so concerned with my eating habits?_ She writes back, flipping on National City’s _Update_ podcast, wondering if the hosts have written up anything on the latest meta-human plaguing National City’s populace. She’s distracted by the inaccuracies of the meta-human’s description, wondering at the scientists the media have staffing their fact-checking offices, so she almost doesn’t notice the next response:

_You work in a highly stressful, physically demanding environment. You must know that the best means of completing your missions is to make sure your agents (including yourself) execute their tasks at peak performance, both physically and mentally. Alcohol cannot do what that apple does for your fiber count, Agent Danvers_.

The pad slides across the table and the pen hovers in the air as the words materialize on the page. It’s the first time Alex has _seen_ the ghost move something with her own eyes, not just seen evidence of something having been touched or rearranged.

It’s slightly unnerving.

Alex read over the message once, twice. Another time just to be sure, and then:

_How do you know about my job? Do you follow me around there, too, or have I just not noticed yet?_

Alex munches on her fries and drizzles that sauce over them as the pen floats in midair again, the straight script a little more hastily scrawled this go-round.

_I cannot follow you to the DEO. In fact, I cannot do much of anything when you are not here. It seems I only know that I am… something, something not quite real nor imaginary, when you are present. You see evidence of my presence, you acknowledge me. But when you leave for work, I simply… cease to exist. Is that odd?_

Alex snaps her fingers impatiently and the pen flies back towards her with all the lethal precision of a javelin launched by a Roman soldier. It jabs her in the arm and Alex grunts.

“You don’t have to throw it so hard,” she murmurs, and wonders what the ghost would say to that. “Hey, wait a… can you hear me?” Alex asks, sliding the pen back to the open seat at her table. It bobs up and down until Alex sees the answer on the pad: _yes_.

“So, you can’t… talk to me, is that right?”

There’s a moment of stillness, of silence, and then the pen again, the movement of the object in the air above her dining table becoming familiar quite quickly.

_Apparently not. Though this is more than I have been able to do for several weeks. Grasping a pen, writing. For the longest time I could not open your cabinets to get to your alcohol, but I eventually mastered some influence over your corporeal reality._

“But you are a ghost, right? You’re dead?”

Another pause, significantly longer than the first, with the pen poised above the pad.

_I cannot be certain. I know that when you are not here, I am nothing. There is no awareness, nothing to remember, no means of my detailing an experience because there_ is no _experience. You leave for work and I linger, half an hour, possibly longer, but then… This is not the afterlife I have believed in for so long._ _It is not what I anticipated when I knew I was dying_.

“How did you die?”

… _an accident._

“Care to elaborate?”

_No._

“Well, then, why did you pick me?”

_Pick you? What do you mean?_

“To haunt. Why my apartment?”

_If I intended to harm you, don’t you think I’d be rather more malevolent in our interactions? I am just as confused as you are, Agent Danvers, and would like your help in continuing on my way, wherever that might be_.

“Well, the only thing I know about ghosts is from books, or movies, you know? Normally, they’re dealing with unfinished business in this life that they have to take care of before they can move on to the next. Do you have something big you needed to put right before you move on?”

_If you expect me to right all the wrongs I made while living, I do not believe I will ever see the Light of home again._

“Come on, it can’t be that bad. What’s your name, maybe I can find your family? Help you get on to your afterlife… whatever it is you believe.”

_I would rather not talk much about myself. My life was…difficult. I should not burden you with past troubles that no longer matter. And I would like to remain just your ghost, for now. I imagine knowing anything more personal might keep you from helping me._

“You think I’m that judgmental?”

_I only wish to move on from this, Agent Danvers. I cannot afford to alienate the one human who can communicate with me by revealing too much. I do not wish to anger you, not when I feel… not when I’m able to feel, to hear, to influence when you’re within proximity of the apartment. Grant me this request. I can not offer much in return, only… I suppose you understand the feeling of utter ineptitude and how that grates, especially when you once thought yourself so capable._

_I do not enjoy feeling helpless._

Alex doesn’t press after that. She finishes her food, her podcast, showers, moves into the den once again.

She bids the ghost goodnight, and feels the burden of responsibility—for herself, her ghost—settle over her chest as securely as a Kevlar vest.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex doesn’t mean to spend a lot of her spare time doing research on ghost sightings and spiritual lore, but it’s interesting. She also doesn’t mean to grow attached to Ghost, but it’s nice to have someone to talk to when she comes home. Alex especially doesn’t mean to laugh when Ghost jokes; she doesn’t mean to playfully dart about the apartment dodging pillows and pens thrown with an accuracy belying the ghost’s intangible composition.

Alex never planned to _like_ her ghost, but she does.

“Found another one today,” Alex mentions, shouldering open the door to her apartment, removing the plastic bubble wrap encased in another plastic sack, taped, then put in a box, separate from the rest of the gear in her pack. “In special collections, but just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s correct.”

Alex looks toward the pen and paper on the table, no longer startled when the two pieces bounce in the air before her, as if the ghost has picked them up and moved closer to her person.

_Really? What is—oh. You look quite terrible._

“At least I look like something,” Alex gripes, swiping at some goop dribbling down over her ear. “Snorzill attack in Nevada. Things got… sticky, obviously,” Alex says, dropping her DEO gear on the floor, slinging the plastic sack the library gave her onto the table.

_But you’ve still got the book? After such an eventful mission?_ _Alexandra, you could’ve waited a day_.

“Yeah, I… I know.”

She could have waited. Probably should have, given the reactions from the librarians when Alex walked into the special collections section at National City University Archives, dripping alien goop and smelling of rotten, festering eggs left in the sun… at a land-fill… in high-humidity weather.

“But I’m excited to see what we find with this one,” Alex deflects, hoping that focusing on the research will keep her from focusing on her ghost: entertaining, witty, good company, but unnecessarily tight-lipped about its living past. This book and the incantations within require the subject to be a little more forthcoming, so Alex was adamant about picking it up the day it became available. She can’t help that she wants to know more about her friend. It seems logical to Alex, the woman standing in a puddle of alien slop, waiting for a response from the dead. It seems completely logical that she check out musty, vellum-bound books to force information from the only person she’s had contact with outside of work for a month.

Alex knows her logic is not always… logical.

The pen in the air zigzags across the paper, and Alex shakes herself from her (admittedly pathetic) musings.

_Shower first. Snorzill mucus can eat through certain materials and leave nasty burns on skin. Your cheeks will look as if you have—what is the phrase? Not tan, but… burn? The sun burn, from the blisters?_

“How do you know that?”

_Why won’t you go shower? You reek of eggs._

“Hey!” Alex grins, careful not to rub her face with the exposed skin of her hand. “You can… you can smell now?”

_I… think I can? If that stench is any indication…_

“That’s good, right? I mean, one more sense you’ve acquired, in addition to the hearing, the touching—oh.”

Alex shivers when the temperatures drop, her left cheek cooler than the condensation on the glass of a poolside mojito. She tries to hold still, for they’ve done this before—tested the ghost’s ability to touch things, objects, humans… and have only come up with temperature shifts and disappointing chills.

Her face begins to warm once the ghost releases her.

“I’m going to go—”

The ghost holds up her notebook and circles one word repeatedly: _shower_.

“Right, going, check out the book while I’m in and we’ll have a better place to start.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex doesn’t mean to shoot her dining room table.

But there’s humming coming from the den area down the hall, and a bodily something that casts a shadow against her floor. Blame it on the dizzying effects of Snorzill mucus residue, because Alex does not feel 100% safe in her apartment any longer. She tucks the edge of the towel at the cinch in her cleavage and retrieves her smaller pistol from the bedside table, loads a few bullets, then slips down the hallway. She creeps, following the sounds of the unearthly humming emanating from the kitchen table, the person in a black—cape?—turning the pages of the book from the archives.

“Are you trying to be sneaky? Because your human architecture leaves much to be desired with all these creaky floorboards.”

The humming resumes, a familiar voice niggling at the back of Alex’s head.

“Stop moving and put your hands up,” Alex commands, training her sights between the person’s—woman’s?—shoulder blades.

The woman—definitely woman, long hair, alto tones—does not do as directed, instead picking up her pen and scribbling away at the notebook at her side. She stops the humming, rises, takes the notebook, turns, and—

“Astra?!”

“What—”

Alex pulls the trigger and the bullet sails through the woman’s body. She shoots again, _pop pop_ , and hears wood splintering, hears the _slap_ of thick pages as the notepad hits the ground. Astra’s knees are bent and she’s casing the apartment, head swiveling to the entrances as Alex moves towards her, rears back with her fist, and falls straight through Astra’s body, sprawling on the coffee table and dislodging the borrowed book from the library.

“What are you doing?!” Astra asks her.

Alex heaves herself up and rotates the gun in her hand, bulletless, but she can use the handle as a bludgeon for a quick fix.

“What am I—what are you—you’re dead!”

Astra blinks, her jaw unhinges, confusion altering her hardened features to an expression far less intimidating.

“We’ve… been over this,” Astra leads, cocking her head to the side, stooping slowly for the notebook, grabbing for the pen on the ground. “Is the notebook—you can see me, but you can’t hear—”

“I can see you,” Alex stops her, brandishing the gun before her body. “And hear you. I said don’t move!”

“Oh, what are you going to do?” Astra smirks, stooping toward the ground to pick up all the things Alex knocked over in her flailing. “Kill me?”

“That’s… not funny.”

“Come now, Agent Danvers. There is some humor given the circumstances,” Astra tells her, circling back toward the table. She gives Alex and her gun-wielding hand a wide berth, glancing up in amusement every so often. “We finally begin to investigate my case—with some degree of pleasantries, dare I say—and then you try to kill me. Again. Tell me, what is it with you and discharging weapons against me in close quarters? You must realize by now they will not work.”

“You…” Alex mumbles, her cheek twitching, her chest burning. “You’re… you’re dead! I killed… I killed you!”

“You must admit you’ve done quite a poor job of it.”

“How are you so… so flip about this? You’re not really here!”

“It is beyond my control,” Astra tells her, shrugging her shoulders.

“Oh god, oh my—fuck, I’m—I’m losing it—”

Never has a gun in her hand felt more dangerous to her than in this instant. Never has her understanding of reality been so tenuous. Never has she doubted herself so completely. Never has Alex felt so shaken, visions of notepads and gleaming green swords swimming as her sights blurs, as the tears form, and her demons chant for bourbon and tell her how worthless she is… she can’t even kill an enemy properly.

Had she really stopped buying alcohol?

Had her last drink only been a few days ago, that white wine with the sweet potatoes and the notepad with the messages?

The _messenger_.

A dead one.

Or did she drink so much that she forgot again? Did she wake up in the shower like that one time in grad school, the droplets burning her body, large, itchy pink patches agitated from a water heater with unmonitored settings, dribbling streams in the shower scarring her shoulders as she reached for the tequila—no, vodka—no gin—that time, three years or an hour ago—she took another chug, sank back while steamy pin-pricks burned her back to reality.

Her skin burns. Her hair is wet.

The gun is heavy in her hand and there are no bullets in the chamber. Alex releases the catch and sees the rotating cylinder absent of ammunition. She cocks the hammer… shoots twice at the floor.

_Click._

_Click._

The gun is heavy in her hand.

“Now that we’ve established I’m not entirely dead, I believe we should examine your book,” Astra continues. “If we look here at page—Alex! Alex, no, _stop_!”

_Click._

Against the soft underside of her chin.

Her face is freezing.

She’s crying.

Astra stands inches from her, phantom hands framing her face, that familiar chill—has Astra been touching her cheek all this time when the temperatures drop, when everything turns blissfully cool?

Her skin burns.

Unconscious in the shower.

Vodka.

Gin.

Tequila shots out of someone’s naval. Who was it? Garry? Ginny? Who took her home and fucked her that night? How did she end up burned and crying, stretched out and leaching the cool from the slick bathroom tile?

“You’re dead…” Alex manages.

“Yes,” Astra nods seriously, all teasing trace absent, no more grins, no more mockery, green eyes kaleidescoping across Alex’s grey vision.

“I’m… I’m dead, too?”

“No,” Astra shakes her head so tightly it looks as if she’s convulsing, jittering, like her body had once Alex removed the sword from her torso, wiped the black blood from the blade and watched the light fade like a guttering candle. “No, Alexandra Danvers, listen to me—”

Alex wrestles with the gun in her grip and the cold overwhelms her, her grip tightening on the stock and then releasing, her arm jerking to the side, twitching, wondering if bullets or burns are mere inevitabilities at this point.

“I did not mean… I did not realize you were… Alex, you have much to live for.”

“What?”

Alex hadn’t completely heard her, but Astra must have misinterpreted the question. For she begins listing things that Alex would rather her not.

“Alex, Kara would be lost without you.”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

_You’ve never needed me._

The truth of it hurts worse than the burns.

_Deep down, you hate me. That’s why you killed my aunt._

“How can you say that?” Astra asks her.

The gun in her hand is heavy, and the cold in her fingers hurts. Alex looks to her right and sees Astra holding her hand tightly, her fingers wrapped round the short barrel of the pistol. Alex releases it and it plunks on the table top with a depressing echo, the dullness lingering and erasing whatever vestiges of finality this exchange requires for Alex to feel sane again.

“She’s always resented me for telling her to hide,” Alex confesses. “She is a god, you’re a… you’re a god and I’m just… just…”

“Agent Danvers, you killed a god. Even in non-human cultures, that is not an easy feat,” Astra tells her. “There is nothing ‘just’ about you.”

“No,” Alex shakes her head. “You’ve… you’ve been here. You’ve seen how bad I… I’m not…”

“You are not crazy, Alex,” Astra reassures her. “I have never… I don’t know what is happening to me, either. When you are here, I am as well. I cannot… I cannot explain it, but this is no hallucination, no vision, no stupor. I’ve seen you on that kitchen floor and I’ve wondered… wondered how Kara would feel if she came in to find you there,” Astra whispers to her.

“Free.”

“Devastated,” Astra corrects, reaching out to touch a tear that rolls over Alex’s cheek, her hand passing through the skin, the droplet freezing into a small sphere. Diamond-hard. “And you would leave me in this apartment alone?” Astra smiles. “You are my entertainment,” she tries. “I expect the soldier who killed me to die an honorable death and this, Alex…”

Astra looks toward the gun, toward the bullets lodged in the table, one in the counter, another in the floor boards.

“We are not friends, but I have known too many soldiers that died by their own hands. I would never wish that on anyone, even an enemy.”

“Is that what we are, still?” Alex asks, stumbling back until her back hits the wall, the cinch of her towel loosening. She grabs at it, her wet hair stuck to her chin, the fresh scent of body wash and shampoo finally overpowering the scent of the gun’s discharge. She slides down to the floor again, the floor where Astra thought she’d kill herself, the floor where Kara might find her body one day.

The gun is no longer heavy in her hand, but her skin does burn. She winces.

“What is it?” Astra asks, stooping to rest on her knees before her.

Astra is a ghost.

Alex is talking to an alien _ghost_.

“I burned my skin… hot water in the shower.”

“No. That’s the Snorzill fluid. I told you, it…” Astra reaches out again and Alex feels that comforting cool on her shoulder this time, an aloe vera apparition. “… did you think you had done this to yourself?”

Alex shrugs and puts her head in her hands.

“Your sanity has not been compromised, Agent Danvers. This must sound strange, coming from the origin of what you believe to be an illusion, but I… I cannot reassure you, for I am unsure what is happening myself. I only know that you are not crazy.”

“I’m getting that,” Alex snaps, her blood boiling despite Astra’s touches, those hands radiating coolness like dry ice. Oh, she wants a _drink_ , she wants her head to spin, she doesn’t want the realization that this bizarre night is really her _life_.

“Where else?”

“What?”

“Where are you burned? We’ve determined my touch is cool, though insubstantial. It will ease your pain—”

“I’ve been hurting far longer than I’ve been burned,” Alex tells her. “No popsicle ghost will do much good.”

“Where are you burned, Alex?”

Alex indicates a spot on her shin that’s so red the surface has bubbled into a collection of skin flaps. “Ate through my trousers, but my boots were tight. I had a big vest on, so it didn’t get me as much on the chest, you know… as it could have.”

Astra places her hand over Alex’s leg. Holds her palm there. Waits.

Alex doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know what to say. The cool pressures are a relief she’s needed for many weeks, a manifestation of a sanity that hasn’t been completely compromised, not yet anyway. Astra doesn’t move as the apartment gets darker, just moves her hands over the glancing burns Alex sustained during her mission. She hums. It’s… nice.

Alex eventually feels cool again, feels like she might be able to stand up and face J’onn, face Kara, face her fellow DEO agents with the mask she’s worn for longer than she can remember.

“You should go to bed,” Astra tells her. “You need sleep. Your skin will heal; the Snorzill fluid does not have a long-lasting effect.”

“How do you know?”

“Fought them. Well, rescued them, relocated them. There was a war… there’s always a war,” Astra tells her, looking down at Alex’s kneecap. “Please go rest.”

“Fine,” Alex says, pulling herself off the floor, running a hand through her damp hair. “I still don’t understand this.”

“No. Neither do I.”

“Then why…” Alex pauses at the entrance to her hallway, turns back over her shoulder. Looks at Astra in those black robes, not a battle suit, the shimmery streak of her hair still stark against her brown curls (even in death), the cut of her jaw as severe as the cut of the sword used to run her through. “…why are you being so nice to me?”

“You’re the only one who can see me,” Astra tells her. “Self-interest, perhaps. If the dead are afforded such selfishness.”

“Why me?” Alex persists.

“It is not because I harbor any ill-will for what you did,” Astra reassures her. “Believe me, Agent Danvers, I do not want to scare you. I could be watching over Kara, or… I would much rather see my sister again, be bathed by Rao’s light…”

Astra’s tears do not fall. They collect, wet and glimmering over swampy irises that look out to the city, stars appearing against the lingering lavender of sunset.

“Perhaps I do not deserve that final grace,” she chokes, twining her fingers together, blinking back her sadness.

“I… know the feeling.”

“I do not blame you, Alexandra,” Astra reiterates. “You gave me an honorable death.”

“Did I?” Alex asks, and it’s the first bit of levity she’s heard in her own voice since she pulled the gun out of the bedside drawer.

“Well,” Astra turns toward her and offers a watery smile. “Do a better job next time.”

Alex’s lips quirk—a grin, perhaps. She dips her head, and leaves Astra in her living area. That night after two fitful dreams, she eventually falls asleep, turning into the cool touch against her cheek.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex and Astra do not mean to form a truce, but it happens by way of necessity. Alex wants to feel less like an insane person, and Astra would like to get on with her afterlife. It only stands to reason that the two work together. It is more surprising that the two work _well_ together.

Astra takes to the books.

Alex to the experimenting.

“I will need copies of your human religious texts,” Astra declares one day, thinking that perhaps Rao’s signals might have crossed with those of Vishnu, or Yahweh, or Allah, or Jesus, or the Buddha’s. “For study.”

“I need you to pick this up,” Alex commands on another day, after she has put Astra through a series of tests that determine just how far her influence over the physical realm extends. She wonders if a Kryptonian ghost might have more substantial strength than an average human ghost. Then again, it’s not like Alex has a huge sampling of human ghosts to observe as controls.

“I feel like one of your lab specimens,” Astra gripes, but goes along with the directives. In the end, they both want the same thing, and that’s to figure out as much as they can about Astra’s presence in Alex’s apartment.

They fall into something of a routine.

Alex wakes early, goes for a run, grabs a coffee, comes back to the apartment. Astra reviews all of the material they have previously researched, and sends Alex off to work with a list of texts to bring back from the library, or the museum, or the archives. Astra likewise reminds Alex to take a vitamin, tells her to put the safety back on her gun before she shoots her foot off, and tells her that she’ll eagerly await her return.

There’s no guile to such a confession.

Astra does eagerly await Alex’s return, for moments after Alex leaves—Alex had once told Astra to time it, write down minute-by-minute how long she stayed in the apartment once Alex left (they got to minute seventeen)—Astra dissolves, or evaporates, or ceases to exist. She cannot explain the sensation (or lack of it), only that the last things she remembers are Alex’s departures and arrivals. The moments in between feel like listless floating.

Alex reads so much crappy pseudo-science with dashes of mysticism thrown in that she’s starting to gain a reputation at the library: the government lady in all black with the ghost obsession. She even took one Saturday to attend a _conference_ , only to find that most of the attendees were deranged crackpots—which really didn’t help with the mass perception of those suffering from mental illness.

It really didn’t help Alex feel better about her own waning mental faculties, either.

But still, with a mission comes an objective, and both women are soldiers. In the down time, they trade battle stories. Astra’s are bit more colorful, for she has traveled to more planets than Alex can name. Her career is staggering, achievements worthy of the Medal of Honor.

Astra reveals herself little by little, and Alex does the same. She talks to Astra of Kara, of their childhood, their adolescence. She talks about her own resentments, confesses that her dreams of becoming a doctor—of _helping_ people—were dashed once her father died, once grad school took a wrong turn, once the pressures of keeping a secret not meant for a child’s fragile shoulders pushed her so deeply into the ground she thought she would die surrounded by the dark weight of it all.

Astra talks of her own sister. Of the resentment she still harbors, of the sadness that overpowers the anger every time.

She talks of Krypton, of her soldiers, of her failures and triumphs and snafus on various missions in spacecraft Alex can’t even picture in her head, the descriptions seem so unreal. Astra confesses to her fear of thunderstorms, for such electric discharges were uncommon on Krypton.

Astra breaks down one night after they make little headway with another useless book, crying because she fears she is not worthy of Rao’s light, that she will be imprisoned in this limbo as punishment for her failures on Earth, just as Rozz was punishment for her failures on Krypton. Alex tries to hold her that night, like Astra had attempted physical comfort the night Alex had gone too far with an unloaded gun. But her hands slip right through Astra’s body, and that only increases her melancholia.

These revelations and confessions do not come overnight, but weeks pass.

Alex looks forward to coming home. They talk Myriad to death and Astra still asserts that the plan was wonderful in theory, though concedes the execution could have been better handled, implemented with less force and more willing submission. Alex disagrees, doesn’t let up, pushes, and they fight. They both scream, huff, stomp away until the other one says— _Hey! Don’t walk away from me!_ —or— _I’m not finished, why won’t you listen?!_ —and it continues until Alex throws something at Astra. The object flies right through Astra’s body and thuds hollow against the floor. It sobers them both and they come to the conclusion that they are much too similar to be arguing this way.

One of them will punch a wall, but only one of them could get hurt doing so. And one of them would be most aggrieved if she ever caused the other harm, especially after all the aid she’s rendered. So apologies are issued. More stories traded. Old Mr. Parsons from the floor below comes and bangs on Alex’s door, calls her looney for shouting and throwing things, and threatens to call the police.

The rest of the night is spent soothing Alex’s weary form, reassuring her that no, she’s not crazy; yes, Astra is grateful for the help; and yes, she’s more than allowed to reach out to other people if she feels the situation is too much for the pair of them.

Alex doesn’t tell Astra she wants to keep her ghostly presence to herself. Alex doesn’t tell Astra she’s afraid of what people might say, of what Kara will accuse her of if she relays such a wild story. And Alex doesn’t tell Astra she doesn’t want to ask for help because if she does, they might achieve something. And if they do achieve something, Astra might leave.

And Alex definitely doesn’t want Astra to go. Not after weeks of working together, more than two months in the same close quarters. Not after a friendship has formed. Not after apologies were issued by both parties, forgiveness extended, understanding shared.

Not after Astra saved Alex from herself, the thing Alex couldn’t do for Astra in return.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“One thing’s really been bothering me,” Alex says one evening when they’re together, sitting at the table, one of those soothing scented candles burning between them. Vanilla this time. Astra likes the smells because it makes her feel more present, so Alex’s apartment has become somewhat of a graveyard for Yankee products, wax cubes and scented oils.

Alex finds that she likes to do what little things she can for Astra since, as a ghost, it is difficult to do a big thing.

“Only one, Alexandra?”

“Don’t start.”

Astra smiles, then inclines her head, indicating that Alex should continue.

“Why aren’t you wearing your suit?” Alex asks. “The black robes, what’s that all about?”

Astra looks down at her clothing and tugs on the swath of fabric wrapped round her shoulders like an elderly woman’s shawl. She runs her hands over the sleeve’s hem at her wrist, checks beneath the table to see her skirts.

“I was buried in these.”

Alex gulps, always on edge whenever they discuss Astra’s “death” in explicit detail, and not death in a more general sense. General. Death.

Damn.

“You just happened to have Kryptonian burial robes on hand?”

“No, these are not burial robes,” Astra corrects her. “They are the robes of my house.”

“The House of El? That’s not right—oh, I guess it would be Ur, right?”

Alex hates bringing Non up. Hates to think that Astra was once attached to the man willing to let all of humanity’s brains explode. When she’d relayed that information, Astra had grown solemn, not daring to explain away Non’s actions. She’d condemned them instead, reassuring Alex that she had never wanted to kill. It had led to another one of those charged moments, instances that had become very frequent since they had grown more open with each other.

“In-Ze,” Astra corrects Alex. “I never underwent the ritual to switch my House’s Alliance. I had obtained my rank in the Military Guild under the name of In-Ze. Not all choose to keep their house’s name, but it is not frowned upon if one does—well, _didn’t_ choose to change it, either. The House of El wore blue robes. The House of Ze has always worn obsidian, the fabric black as the furthest reaches of space.”

Alex smiles at Astra’s inadvertent reverence, thinks it is just one more thing about Astra that she appreciates. Her intensity for subjects. For battle, for fighting, for learning of this world’s religions, of its supernatural lore, of its kitchen appliances. Their second big fight had come when Astra had gone online and ordered a $300 juicer for Alex, hoping the so-called “investment” would keep Alex on her healthy eating streak. Speaking of eating…

“Do you ever get hungry?” Alex asks, feeling guilty that she had plenty to share, but Astra couldn’t ingest it.

She’s made spaghetti, hunks of beefy meatballs covered in red tomato sauce with oregano and basil piled high on her plate. She’s drinking _water_ , not a sports drink, or coffee (which she still might have later), but Astra’s preoccupation with mortality as a Kryptonian has made her even more conscious of Alex’s fragile health as a human.

Astra even asked about Alex’s cholesterol one night when Alex came home with a sack of take-out. Alex had sworn and thrown her DEO bag straight through Astra’s body, but the alien didn’t let up, leaving Googled recipes on Alex’s laptop, or turning to the Cooking Network with a _this doesn’t look very difficult, Alexandra_ , comment to accompany her less-than-subtle hints.

“No,” Astra says, looking up from the book she’s skimming. “I miss Kryptonian food but… no, I don’t feel hungry.”

“Which one’s that?” Alex asks, twirling the noodles around with her fork. She has some soothing instrumental music playing in the background (she hates the quiet. It reminds her of the mornings she woke to hangovers and empty beds) and a kitchen table full of books. Astra sits across from her, turning page after page, flipping through sections that have nothing to do with her case.

They’ve discovered that the more they interact, the stronger Astra’s senses become. She can type, pick up a remote, distinguish one scent from another, hear everything happening within the apartment, but nothing beyond. One morning, Astra had tested how long she could keep an object around her form by throwing a sheet over her body. She had then positioned herself next to Alex’s bed, cried _Boo!_ as soon as the alarm went off, and scared Alex shitless in the process. But the experiment left Astra cackling for the rest of the morning, and Alex could hardly begrudge her those little entertainments. It was hard keeping a Kryptonian mind occupied after more than two months in a small human apartment.

They have discovered that Astra’s senses as a Kryptonian ghost are remarkably similar to those of a living human, saving the exception of touching people, doors, walls—she can move right through solid surfaces when she wills it.

And then there’s the ever present chill.

“ _Microbiology of Ectoplasmic Residue_ ,” Astra reads from the cover, scoffing over the words. “It is about as helpful as a Mullsman operating a TriBow Phaser.”

“Okay…”

“Now you know how those senseless human references make me feel,” Astra comments, shutting the book and leaning back in her seat. “This is useless.”

“Come on, we were making some headway with that psychic text—”

“Those absurd claims were sensationalized beyond comprehension, Alexandra.”

“ _Alex_ ,” she says, slurping the end of her noodle through pursed lips. She wipes her face and pushes her plate away, taking a swig of water. “I’ve told you over and over.”

Astra grunts, stands, then moves to the windows, unlatching the lock and pushing the frames out toward the unused balcony.

“Why do you do that? The windows, I mean.”

“I like to look at the stars,” Astra answers, even though twilight has not yet run its course. “I miss Krypton. I miss my powers. I could see great distances when living, and now, I can hardly make out the planets in your solar system.”

“Planets?”

“Venus is shining brightly this week.”

“Really?”

“Come, I’ll show you,” Astra beckons her forward. She points over Alex’s shoulder when she gets into position, encouraging Alex to follow her arm and finger toward the tiny bright planet. “It amazes me that your kind know so little of other worlds.”

The chill around Alex’s shoulders feels good in the heat of National City. Alex tells herself it is shifting temperatures, and not the realization that Astra is standing so close, that feels good.

“It’s hardly our fault that Earth is younger than Krypton,” Alex replies. “We might get to where you were eventually.”

Alex means it as a compliment and an argument; that Krypton was great, that Earth can be great as well, given the same amount of centuries.

“I hope not,” Astra tells her. “Our pride was our undoing. And what I’ve seen of humans… you need more humility, not pride.”

Alex is about to counter, but the body slam cuts her off. She crashes through her own window, wrapped up in the meta-human who could poison people through open wounds… but only if you were already bleeding.

Alex rolls out of the debris and leaps to her feet, checking her hands quickly for any nicks in the skin, flinging herself beyond the couch as Dr. Richardson (of course, a doctor, a chemist, wronged by the administration, a lab-accident gone poorly, she’s heard it all before) hurls handfuls of shattered glass in her direction.

“You’re a scientist!” Dr. Carson wails, crawling to his feet. “You said you understood!”

Yeah, Alex had said that, but she had also been interrogating a suspect. The sympathetic tactic was part of her _job_.

“You lied, just like everyone else!”

That part is true, has been for a very long time. Alex is good at lying. She’s also good at fighting. But one scratch and she’s done for, especially if he gets his hands on her skin, if that poison so much as seeps in through a crack.

“Alex!”

“Kinda busy here,” she tells Astra, upending her dinner table and dislodging the contents all over the floor.

She takes cover, ducking her head as Dr. Richardson stomps so hard the room shakes, fissures running up the dry wall. Besides the poisoning was the super strength and hulking musculature, so yeah… not great. Her gun won’t do much good against a man who can control his own blood flow, can keep it _inside his body_ even if a puncture wound has pierced his flesh.

“Alex,” Astra calls to her, and everything gets cold. “Let me help you.”

Astra is at once before her, looming, close enough to lie on top of her had Astra’s body been solid. She’s sitting on Alex, _in her_ , possessing her skeleton, her limbs, her joints and muscles with a searing, burning chill. Alex rolls out from behind the table faster than she has ever rolled in her life, faster than she has ever _sprinted_. Glass crunches beneath her body, but her skin doesn’t break. Her eyes are simmering, her breath feels like summer snow cones. Her frame, weightless. She rushes behind Richardson and kicks the back of his knees so hard she hears a _snap_ , hears the tibia separate itself from the joint at the patella. Richardson cries out and falls to his knees, staggering as Alex brings her clasped hands in a brutal blow against the back of his head, his skull crumbling in on itself from the force of her strength.

Soft acoustic music plays amid the rubble in her apartment. She'll be lucky if she finds her phone before the battery dies. Dust rises in gritty columns. Sirens sing in the distance.

Alex shakes a little, levitates, feels the power of a soul with an altered anatomy course through her and oh, this is power, safety, _superiority_. She smiles, her chapped lips splitting at the corners, the salt of a tomato stain burning a bit from the tear at her lip crease. All of her senses feel flooded, hyperactive, electric. She looks round her apartment and hardly cares about the damage, feeling so high on the strength, the power.

Until she looks down… down, and sees grey matter oozing from the back of Dr. Richardson’s head, blood and black fluid staining the edges of her grey rug.

She has killed so many times before, but never with her bare _hands_. Her fingers could clutch the man’s skull and with the slightest pressure, the rest of his brain would come spurting out. A human party-popper.

Alex stares and stares at the leak.

“Alex!”

Her hands are shaking.

“Alex, hey, what’s—”

Her knees wobble.

“Alex! Are you o—Alex, what did you do?”

Kara, clad in Supergirl blue and blood-blood red, hurtling in through the busted windows, staring down at Richardson’s immobile body.

“Alexandra,” Astra calls from across the room, having relieved Alex’s body of a Kryptonian soul’s possession. Alex sees the shadows of longing in Astra’s eyes for the first time in months, sees her regard the pair of them with awe. “Alexandra, _say_ something to her.”

“Alex, come on,” Kara tries, guiding her over to the dirty couch. There’s wax drying on the arm of the sofa. Smells like vanilla. Alex runs her fingers over the hardened, shell-like surface and presses, cracking the layer of wax as easily as she had that man’s skull.

“You’re so powerful,” Alex says, looking up at Astra, who has come to stand directly in front of her. Alex can feel Kara’s head shifting beside her, twisting, the squeak of her cape’s material louder than a symphony’s cymbal.

“Yes,” Astra tells her. “I was.”

“You both…”

“Both? Alex, please…” Kara implores her, eyes shuttered in the twilight. “You’re scaring me.”

“I crushed his skull,” Alex says. “He came at me, through the window… I thought we had him in containment—no, we were transporting him to the facility in the desert—”

“Must’ve escaped in the transport,” Kara deduces. “You interrogated him… he was probably holding a grudge—”

“I cracked his head open like an egg,” Alex says. “That’s… that’s his brain. That jiggly stuff…”

“Alex…”

“I am sorry, Alexandra,” Astra says, looking at her own hands. “I do not know… when I was alive, I could regulate it. But I feared for your life, and you—we—I felt one with you. Your movements, my strength.”

“You were scared for me?”

“Of course!” Kara says, taking Alex’s shaking hand in her own.

Astra nods, a simple dip of the chin, a blink, an admission. “Yes,” Astra confesses, her tone far more stately than Kara’s hysterics. “Of course.”

“I can’t believe that worked,” Alex tells her.

“What?” Kara asks, moving to kneel before Alex. Her sister brushes tears Alex doesn’t remember crying from her cheeks. “What worked for you, Alex?”

Alex feels a grin tug at her features despite the gruesome scene in her apartment.

“I flew.”

Astra smirks. “Only a little.”

“It was amazing,” Alex says, breathless.

“You… Alex, did he hit your head?” Kara asks her, reaching for her hair.

“Don’t. I’m fine, Kara,” Alex ducks her sister’s hand, swipes at her eyes, stands straighter, moves, magnetized, drawn to Astra. “I should… call J’onn,” Alex says, an afterthought, her adrenaline snaking along her spine and bubbling along her biceps, her thighs, all the way down to her toes. She could fly, fuck, fight, whatever—she feels invincible, a facsimile of Kryptonian powers.

“Yeah,” Kara says, dumbfounded, stepping over rubble and IKEA furniture blasted to bits. “Yeah, let’s call J’onn, get a team in here,” Kara summarizes. “Once you give him your statement, you can come stay at my—”

“No,” Alex cuts her off, turning instinctively toward Astra. “I’ll stay here. It didn’t… I’m okay, Kara, really. It just—caught me off guard is all.”

“You loved it,” Astra teases her, running her fingers along Alex’s arm. That coolness, that _power_ —why boot one addiction when she could just as easily succumb to another?

“Don’t,” Alex warns her.

“Don’t what?” Kara asks, still confused, still concerned. “Why would you want to stay here?”

Alex turns back to look at Astra, feels more than adrenaline pumping, feels some attraction that never had the time to develop when they were living, when they were battling. But now, after that drug of Kryptonian power, Alex wants another hit, another shot, another fight. Even if she just presses against Astra’s coolness, it will be enough. That’s what she tells herself. That’s what she lets herself believe.

Alex pulls Kara into a hug, trying to reassure her sister, trying to ease her confusion. She doesn’t do a good job of it, but she knows J’onn and the team will be here shortly, will be tromping up those stairs and find Supergirl a mess, Alex dazed, and an oozing body on the floor.

“It’s alright, I live up pretty high,” Alex tells Kara, but fixes her gaze on Astra’s critical stare. “I’ll keep the windows open.”

Alex doesn’t mention that she wants to jump, and fly off into the night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex doesn’t intend to take Astra to bed, but the night has her agitated.

“Will you stay?” Alex asks her, plucking the toothbrush from her mouth, swiping at the minty residue on her upper lip.

“What?”

It’s after one a.m. The DEO forensics team still has tiny yellow cards with big black numbers scattered about her living room floor, a clear visqueen tarp strung up and stapled to the huge hole in her wall. Alex has always assumed Astra slept on the couch, or disappeared, or meandered down the hall to haunt the next apartment over, but tonight, Alex wants that power next to her. Craves it.

“Just… stay. Just lie down, until I fall asleep.”

“Why?” Astra asks her. “Are you frightened?”

“No,” Alex says truthfully. “I’m not frightened, but… I still want you to stay.”

“Very well.”

When Alex returns from rinsing, she slips her jeans off and removes her black polo and bra, diving into the bottom drawer for her old NCU t-shirt. She pulls it overhead and faces Astra, who sits rigidly atop the foot of her bed.

“I take the right side,” Alex tells her, nodding over toward the left. She tries not to make a big thing of it, but even she is unable to put reason to her request. It’s more than the power she craves, more than that haunting chill that has become more comfort than worry over the past few months. Alex tucks herself beneath her covers and double-checks the bedside table. The gun is heavy in her hand, but Astra is cool by her side. She slides the piece back into the drawer, flicks the lamp off, and lies on her back staring straight up at the ceiling.

“That’s twice you’ve saved my life, now,” Alex says in the darkness, her hand gravitating toward the cold.

“Is that why you asked me here?” Astra whispers back. “Do you feel like you owe me something?”

“Maybe, I don’t know,” Alex tells her, her brain finally returning to human speeds, her breath slowing to even exhales. “Thank you for letting me feel that. It was intoxicating.”

“My first month on Earth was… challenging.”

“I can’t imagine the full extent of it,” Alex says. “With a real body.”

“I would give up that power for a real body,” Astra tells her. “Especially now.”

“You would?”

“Most certainly.”

…

…

…

“Astra?”

“Hmm?”

“I… wish I could hold your hand.”

…

…

…

“Alex?”

…

…

…

“Alex, are you sleeping?”

…

…

…

“I wish I could hold yours, too.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex does not intend for Astra to fuck her—couldn’t really conceive of getting it on with a ghost—but it happens.

Two weeks have passed since the incident with the meta-human in her apartment, and Alex has finally reassured Kara that things are fine, that she was merely shaken the night of the attack. Kara has come over twice for T.V. nights, and Astra has been thrilled at both visits. Kara is more than stunned with Alex’s new aptitude for the culinary arts, and questions her relentlessly about the new hobby.

“I don’t know, Kara,” Alex told her, hushing her one evening when Kara persisted with the questions. “I just picked it up.”

“But there has to be a reason!” Kara had argued. “Are you binging shows without me now? I can’t think of anything that would cause you to come sprinting home like you’ve been doing for the past month. And you’ve missed the past two game nights! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you had a secret boyfriend.”

Alex drops the wooden spoon she used for her cheesy chicken sauce against the rim of the pan, splashing piping hot cream onto her forearm.

“Shit!”

“Chill out, it was just a joke,” Kara says, standing from her bent position, having caught the spoon before it could splatter against the ground.

“Thanks… sorry, I was just, uh, trying to get the consistency on this right,” Alex says, adding more heavy cream.

Kara looks amused, Alex flushed, and Astra utterly discomposed, leaning against the door of the kitchen and avoiding Alex’s stare at all costs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Kara is not wrong in her assessment, Alexandra,” Astra tells her, a few nights after Kara’s visit.

“Alex. And what assessment is that?” Alex pauses the DVD, turning back to the woman sitting on the couch beside her. They have been through _Ghostbusters_ , _The Others, Casper_ , _The Sixth Sense_ , and, last but not least, _Ghost_. Thankfully, they had watched that movie and the iconic pottery wheel scene prior to Kara’s comment, and Alex had made some snarky remark about how unsanitary clay could be in the act, shifting the focus from the story to the Righteous Brothers.

“Our… relationship?” Astra supplies. “You could… watching your media and reading your texts, it is common for single women to bring home suitors, correct?”

“What are you talking about?” Alex asks her.

“You do not have to limit yourself to accommodate me.”

“Limit myself?”

“Your sexual pursuits, Alexandra.”

“Can’t you just say Alex?”

“I will, if you will answer the question.”

“You’re not asking a question,” Alex tells her, rearranging herself so that one foot is propped underneath her body on the couch, her upper half facing Astra for the strangest conversation she’s ever had (which is saying something, between her daily interactions with aliens, spirits, and meta-humans). “You’re just saying I need to date more? Is that it?”

“I do not want you to stop living your life because I take up all of your free time. We are no better off than we were almost three months ago when this all began, and I cannot help but feel guilty for taking you away from—”

“Not better off?” Alex stops her, moves closer, reaches out and holds her hand above Astra’s knee, feels the cold in her fingers and wishes she could clutch at the skin. “How can you say that?”

“We’ve made no headway. We’ve no understanding of why I’m here, why I cannot leave, why I’m… attached to you.”

“I haven’t had a drink in three weeks, thanks to you,” Alex tells her. “I’ve…I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in a long time. Astra, if anything, I’m the selfish one. Maybe I haven’t been trying hard enough to find the right sources. I haven’t told people at the DEO—I was afraid—but if we’re linked psychically, like that book says—”

“Alex,” Astra stops her, shaking her head. “You can’t live your life expecting me to be in it.”

“… what if I want to?”

“Pardon?”

“What if I want you back?” Alex clarifies. “We’ve been trying to send you to the afterlife, but—but I think we’re looking at this the wrong way. You’re obviously here for a reason. Myriad is gone. You’re… different now. Even… even when I stabbed you, I don’t think I gave you the chance you deserved. You helped me with the Black Mercy, helped me free Kara, you wanted to end it, why did I—”

"Stop," Astra holds up a hand, tries to keep Alex from going down the dangerous path they both know will lead to heartache. “Don’t do this, Alex.”

“Stand up,” Alex commands, scrambling off the couch, shucking the fuzzy blanket she’d kept over her body to combat the evening chill. Of course they have the window open. Of course Astra’s charted the nightly stars, has told Alex that the Perseids will be flying by mere days from now. Alex is supposed to slip away from the DEO’s desert location on night shift and attempt to take pictures. She’s supposed to bring them back to Astra. Astra’s supposed to smile over that little comfort, because with ghosts… it’s hard to do something big.

“Alex—”

“Please,” Alex tells her, unable to reach out and tug Astra up by the arm, wishing she could.

Astra relents, stands, refusing to face Alex, preoccupied instead with the low, tenebrific clouds floating outside the window. Alex almost laughs at the obliging weather.

It’s the perfect night for a ghost story.

Alex lifts her hand and places it as close to Astra’s face as she can.

“Look at me,” she whispers, feeling the cool tingle fighting with the heat simmering in her abdomen.

Astra moves within centimeters of Alex’s face, head tilted ever-so-slightly, eyelids hooded, jaw open, tears… welling despite her proximity.

“I’m dead,” she whispers, as if Alex could ever forget the feeling of a sword pushing through a spine, through a ribcage, the vibration of Astra’s gurgling breath against the handle of the blade.

“I don’t care,” Alex tells her, standing on her tiptoes, aligning their faces in an almost-kiss. Coolness. Insubstantial lips and curves she wishes she could hold onto. “It’s too bad I don’t have ‘Unchained Melody’ on my phone,” Alex murmurs. “But I’m a terrible dancer.”

“That seems an overly harsh assessment,” Astra murmurs, spreading her hands, prompting Alex to press against her as close as she dares, as close as the blissful cool allows them before passing through one another’s bodies. “I’ve seen you flit about in preparation for your morning, checking into the DEO. You dance. You are happy.”

“You make me happy.”

“How can I, when I’m not even here?”

Alex’s cheeks flame, hoping to never admit how often she’s thought of this possible encounter. Truthfully, she's considered it most nights since the possession with the powers, and now, she’s not been rejected. Only rebuffed for logistics sake, not from a lack of interest.

Logistics she can work with. Rejection... not so much.

“Come with me,” Alex says, leading Astra to the bedroom.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Alex shuts the door to the en suite, the floor-length mirror hanging on the back of her bathroom door now facing the right side of her bed. Astra stands warily in the doorway to hall, arms crossed over her shoulders, chin turned down to stare at the floor.

“There have been offers,” Alex tells Astra, moving toward the edge of her bed, sinking down, toeing off her boots. Her socks go next, methodical, unhurried, and then her shirt. “A guy in R&D, this cool girl with NCPD. They might’ve worked… in another life, I guess.”

“Alex, I don’t think this is a good idea," Alex watches as Astra extends her hands, gripping hold of the door jamb, trying to leach strength from the wooden frame. "We should… we should stop now. I do not wish to see you hurt.”

“If we keep going, we don’t have to face the fact that we never should’ve started. We'll be in too deep. Look at me, Astra,” Alex tells her, sliding her bra straps off, twisting the clasp at the back and disposing of the garment in one dexterous movement. “I’ve seen the way you watch me when you think I’m not paying attention. When I’m changing, after I’ve showered, walking around in my towel. I like the way you stare at my legs when I’m just out of bed, no shorts on—”

“It is cruel to tease me with something you know I cannot have,” Astra snips, her fingers balled into anguished fists.

“Do what you did the night of the attack,” Alex tells her, standing, slinking towards Astra as she runs one finger along the hem of her grey sweats. “I could take these off… or you could help.”

Astra disappears in an instant and Alex feels the power flood her, the intensity ratcheted up several notches compared to her last possession. Her hands—Astra’s hands—slip inside her underwear and cup her heat while she’s still standing by the doorway: too quick, too eager, too much and far too soon.

“Wait,” Alex gasps, adjusting to the Kryptonian inside her, yet not… _inside her_. “Wait, let me—”

_This is what you wanted?_

Astra's voice, perfect, low, sensual, rumbling in her head.

“Yes,” Alex rasps, the fingers of her right hand scrabbling for purchase against the doorway. Her left drags against her center where she’s slick, ready, hotter than the beams she can feel pulsing behind her eyelids. “Yes, but I want… I want it to be us.”

_Us?_

“On the bed.” Alex feels her feet take her back to the bed so quickly she seems to be skimming the floorboards, not quite in touch with reality. “The mirror…I want you to watch.”

_Rao, Alex—_

She gets to the edge of the bed and turns, her mouth already hung open, breathing hard and fast. “Okay, I’m ready, you can— _fuck_ ,” Alex gurgles, feels the pistoning of two fingers inside her body, sharp, possessive, desperate…nothing like the rhythms she usually sets for herself.

_If I could kiss you—_

“Yes?” Alex gasps, keeping her eyes open, watching as her wrist disappears beneath her waistband. “Wha—what would you do?”

_Ravish you_.

“God—”

_Kiss your neck so hard I’d leave marks. Bite you, Alex, curl my fingers around your neck and squeeze, so you know this is real, so you believe in me, believe in us—_

Her wrist will hurt after this. It’s _her_ body, but Astra’s movements. She feels the scissoring with two fingers deep inside of her, no trace of timidity, no build up, just an all-out assault; the brush of her palm through the trimmed patch of hair above her heat; a talented thumb set to swiping, light pressures, then hard, grinding circles.

Alex usually uses two hands for penetration and exterior stimulation, but Astra is either more dexterous or better in bed or just— _oh, fuck_.

“Oh, fuck, Astra,” Alex moans, feels the opposite hand that had been propping her up climb her abdomen and palm her own breast, pinch her stiff nipple, claw at her neck so hard she’s definitely left angry red tracks along the skin of her collar bone.

_I want to leave marks on you, Alex._

“Do it.”

_I do not understand this._

_“_ It’s okay,” Alex reassures her, planting her feet against the floorboards, opening herself wider, so slippery, so swollen. It’s so _fast_ , so much faster than she normally comes with her lonely fingers. “Me… me either. But you feel—Astra, keep going—”

_Can I taste you?_

Alex bites her lips and nods, her neck snapping violently in the action, thinking about how wet her fingers are, how she'll taste for Astra's phantom tongue... on her _own_ tongue. Astra pulls her hand from Alex’s pants and soon the taste floods her mouth, all at once foreign and familiar, two cool fingers drenched, her tongue swirling about her index and then scraping along the ridged roof of her mouth. She moans, sucking the fingers deeper, quickly swiping through her folds to steal another taste. She makes a show of it, pumping her fingers in and out, watching herself in the mirror, her cheeks hollowing as she thinks of Astra, tasting her...she removes her fingers and digs her nails into the skin off her thigh.

"I wish I could lick into you..."

_Oh, Rao—_

“Oh, god—”

Astra’s moves are steadier now, as if she’s finally found a balance while controlling Alex’s limbs. She yanks the sweat pants from Alex’s hips and tears her panties off her thighs, surging back inside and building Alex up with persistent, heavy thrusts. Two fingers, perfect. A third... so tight, something else to lick when she's spent.

_You taste amazing_. _Like something living, the first thing I have tasted in months…_

Alex can’t concentrate, not with the Kryptonian power flowing through her, flooding her, fucking her with her own hand.

“I wish I could… nghhhh.”

_Alex, oh, you are such a sight. Beautiful, brave little human. Look at yourself.  
_

Alex opens her eyes despite the burn, despite the fingers drilling her below. She is embarrassed by her reflection, finger-fucked breathless, back arched like a pulled bow string, the heat bubbling within her from some mysterious connection she has no words for.

That is a lie. She has a word. But she’s afraid to even think it, lest Astra hear her thoughts during this strange, erotic possession.

_You have been so brave for me. Alex, I wish I could kiss you. I want to kiss you so badly._

“I want—Astra!—I want to k-kiss you.”

_I want to be able to wrap my arms around you._

“I want to taste you. I want to bury my head in your legs and only surface when…" Her breath hitches, her stomach tightens, "...fuck, I can’t—”

_Alex, you can come, thank you for this, love, Alex, I love—_

“Astra!!!”

Alex tenses and gushes, slumps, the contractions pulling her fingers deeper, an irritating, painful knot formed in the muscle of her hand.

_Worth it,_ Alex thinks. Every scratch, every pulled muscle, all of it worth this feeling…

Astra kneels before her, the coolness returned with the absence of possession, Astra’s hands placed on either of Alex’s thighs. She feels boneless once again, a mass of useless muscle.

“You are… okay, Alexandra?”

“Hell yes,” Alex replies, finding her voice despite the glitchy aftershocks. Her joy feels so tangible she wonders if she could share it with Astra, wonders if Astra’s touch might melt that little ball of warm love she’s been carrying in her heart for the past few weeks.

“Astra?”

“Yes?”

“Did you say…you called me ‘love’.”

“I know such openness is not common on your planet,” Astra draws back, her bright face clouding as quickly as summer storms cloud the desert headquarters.

“I love you, too,” Alex tells her, kissing her own hand, placing those fingers against Astra’s insubstantial cheek.

“Oh?” Astra’s mouth drops wide, her brows scrunched in bewilderment. “You… you do?”

“We’ve got to find a way to get you back,” Alex rushes. “Not just for the sex, but… that was good, too.”

“I am glad you approve, though my technique could be improved with the use of my… well, _body_.”

“Then we’re going to need help. I can’t… I can’t keep you to myself any longer,” Alex shrugs, pulling the blanket at the edge of the bed to wrap round her shoulders.

“Let’s leave out the possession parts, especially if speaking to Kara.”

“She’s going to kill me,” Alex groans, dropping her head in her hand, hating the forthcoming conversation: your dead aunt has been living with me for three months and we also got it on without her actually having a body. Happy Labor Day, sis!

“We could look at that as a positive,” Astra muses. “At least then we would be on the same plane of existence.”

Alex throws a pillow through Astra’s head, flopping back with a snort. When coolness envelops her body from behind, she relaxes, smiles, and resolves to resurrect the woman she killed.

Alex Danvers never intended to fall in love with her enemy.

Oops.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 


	2. even when one is dead and gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these idiots are so in love it's ridiculous

 

 

 

Alex doesn’t mean to turn obsessive, but Astra is the most interesting person she’s ever talked to.

She swears one day, a day that always turns out to be _tomorrow_ , she’s going to dive headfirst into research, into doing her damndest to get Astra back onto this plane. But somewhere along the way routine takes over, _tell me about your days_ and _what’s the most interesting language you’ve ever learned_ taking supreme precedence over musty old tomes from the archives that only ever lead to dead ends.

Why read in silence when she could talk to Astra? Why watch a movie or turn a page or spend more time away from her apartment when Astra’s right there, ready to greet her with a wry twist of her lips, _Agent Danvers_ rolling off of her tongue?

Her time away from the apartment increases thanks to the arrival of Cadmus, of Guardian, of a million different interruptions that she once would have cherished because of the distraction they provided.

Now, all she thinks about is the time she’s losing, time she could be spending with Astra.

“Tell me more about Yygdern IV,” Alex requests, rolling over in bed, holding her hand as close to Astra’s palm as she can.

They lie together every night Alex makes it home and Astra tells her the wildest tales, stories of previous missions and of battles fought throughout Krypton’s history that leave Alex stunned and exhilarated, eager to know more, to know everything about the woman resting atop the covers of her bed.

“The mountain climbers?”

“Yeah, the torches and the gun powder canons. How were they able to prevent the powder from crystallizing at those temperatures?” Alex asks, the questions moving as fast as the hybrid reptiles the snow people of Yygdern used in combat.

Snow _dragons_ , domesticated and trained, on a planet with _lavender_ snow, but with _magma_ waterfalls. And Astra had led a battalion off-world to help with construction efforts after a warlord redirected the flow of the nearest river and razed the Dernite’s settlements to the ground. She’d been instrumental in coordinating agricultural classes in the frigid climate during her deployment. Had been stern and compassionate and brilliant and powerful—had been so many things to so many people in so many places—before Alex took her life.

Every now and then, Alex falls into bouts depression, residual effects from a year lived in the valleys of anxiety.

She still wants to drink but doesn’t, tries to keep a handle on it for Kara and Astra. But some nights she thinks of Astra lying beside her, dead, unable to return her touch or run her fingers through Alex’s hair. Her throat constricts and her eyes glaze over, and Alex thinks about what a drink could do to cloud her guilt.

What's worse is Astra _knows_ , knows her so well after more than four months of cohabitating, waking and talking and lounging together. So Alex distracts herself by regaling Astra with stories of alien attacks and asking Astra’s advice about military movements. Astra acquiesces to Alex’s constant entreaties to hear foreign, alien myths she can never get enough of.

Like the ones on Yygdern IV.

“How did they keep the powder dry with all the snow?” Alex continues, pulling the blanket up near her neck, snuggling under covers and wishing she could cocoon herself against Astra to keep warm.

“Would you like me to tell you the chemical composition of their atmosphere and precipitation cycles as well, Alexandra?”

“Yeah, that’d be—oh, you’re joking,” Alex frowns, rolling over on her back to twist the knob on her lamp.

“No, wait a moment,” Astra leans up on an elbow, the chill of her arm passing through Alex’s wrist producing enough of a shock to halt her movements.

“What?” Alex tilts her head, grinning up at Astra. “It’s late, I don’t mean to annoy you.”

“You are not a bother,” Astra murmurs, looking down at Alex from her perched position, running one of her fingers along the contours of Alex’s left cheek.

Alex closes her eyes against the cold and sighs, imagining the feeling of skin against her face. Maybe calloused, maybe blistered, maybe smooth as Kara’s indestructible cape. She wants to know the feel of Astra’s _hands_ , wants to know if her training left them rough or if her status in Kryptonian high society kept them smooth. No matter the texture, she wants to feel them, to experience the intimacy that occurs when two people who know each other like they do intertwine fingers and simply exist, connected by palms and lifelines.

“I’m keeping you awake,” Alex manages, suddenly shy, turning her head to escape the heat of Astra’s gaze.

“I believe that is the other way around, and yet I am so tired of sleeping,” Astra tilts her back upright and leans in to place her forehead against Alex’s, to share her cool smoothness. “I cannot help but encourage your eagerness, your interest, and your curiosity, brave little human.”

Alex hates that her own smile weasels through. The name is slightly derogatory, belittling, and precious all at once. “Of all the nicknames…”

“Shh,” Astra chides her, moves her face lower, the familiar tingles associated with Astra’s proximity erupting against Alex’s nose, against her lips.

Alex smiles into the feeling but it pains her, produces aches at the junction of her synapses. Pavlovian positivity, Alex surmises, for she’s come to associate that coolness with Astra’s proximity, rationalizing that the temperature drop is _positive_ , is _a good thing_ , because that means Astra wants to be close to her. And yet, as close as they are now, temperatures aren’t textures, and snowflakes can’t kiss her cheeks. No matter how hard she tries to find satisfaction in the action, Alex wants to feel Astra’s skin. She wants to be able to touch her and hold her and apologize for cutting off something that could’ve been truly miraculous.

It _is_ truly miraculous, a ghost, _Astra_ , in her apartment ( _in love with her_ in her apartment).

“I can sense your worry, Alexandra,” Astra murmurs. “I wish I could ease such troubles.”

“I can’t not worry,” Alex blinks against the lamplight, tries to figure out how shadows hurtle and bend around Astra’s form when she’s not really _there_. “When all I think about is you and how much you mean to me.” Alex grips harder against her duvet because she can’t dig her nails into Astra’s hip. “…and what I did to you.”

They’ve almost had this conversation four times. Alex can mark on the calendar the exact day and hour when she’d tried to deliver her apology for all those months ago on the rooftop. She remembers gathering her courage, easing into the conversation, and then Astra’s swift subject change, intercepting Alex before she could make her amends.

But what Astra doesn’t understand is that she needs this confession, needs to say it out loud so that she can face it. Because saying it makes it real. Words are important, and if Alex can apologize, Astra can forgive her, even if she doesn’t feel she has to.

But Alex needs her forgiveness like an addict needs a vice, because she doesn’t know how to go on living without it.

“Astra, I—”

“I know,” Astra hushes her, stares at her and into her and through her, for that is all she can give. “Alex, there is no need—”

“Why won’t you let me _say_ it?” Alex feels the solid lumps forming in her nostrils and her throat, the areas that tighten and strain despite her best attempts at staying strong. Her eyes burn so she reaches for the lamp again.

“Alex, no—”

“I hate that you keep seeing me like this,” Alex admits, staring deliberately at the wall. “I can’t keep crying over you.”

“Oh, Alex.” The way Astra says her name only makes her want to cry more. She’s heard it yelled and whispered and teased and moaned on nights Alex allows the possession, and tonight it sounds piteous, couched in tonal comfort that Alex immediately wants to reject.

“I’m sorry,” Alex tries. “I’m being stupid—”

“You are so far from it,” Astra reassures her. “Alex, the way you feel about me? Remembering how it was… that night on the roof, with the... sword?” Astra pulls disparate thoughts together, follows the breadcrumbs of those past apology attempts and faces them head-on, like the glorious general that she is. “I have felt similarly… not quite the same, it was not by my hand—”

“Wait,” Alex pushes up on her elbows, wanting to hug her, wanting to touch her so badly her nerve endings sear her insides. “Are you crying?”

“I saw… I saw you put a gun to your head,” Astra whimpers, gazing at Alex like she’s the key to the most difficult of puzzles. “I’ve seen you throw bottles against your wall, and cut your hands on glass, and… drink… some nights you wouldn’t wake, and—oh, darling…”

“Astra—”

“I’ve seen what you think of yourself, how you reconcile or… do not reconcile your failures. I know that sadness, and Alex, I wish to spare you that pain,” Astra is crying, openly weeping, and Alex can’t even offer to wipe her tears away.

“No, I didn’t… I didn’t mean…”

“What if you had succeeded?” Astra sucks in a breath, her sobs less severe as Alex offers comforting sounds, little affections whispered inches from the haze of Astra’s form. “What if… what if I had not intervened? Alex, I cannot thank you enough for putting a sword through me because it allowed me to be here for you when you needed me most.”

“You saved me,” Alex marvels at their connection, fleeting and insubstantial. “You saved me and… I love you, I love you so much.”

Words are important, and Alex can hardly get them out.

She always tells Astra she loves her in incomplete mumbles, at odd hours or during rushed exits, never so deliberately and never when they have serious conversations. It is as if speaking them might add greater weight to such a declaration.

“I never meant to scare you… we… how did this happen to us?”

Astra shakes her head and Alex succumbs to the enchantment cast by long brown curls, one dazzling streak of white daring to stand out against the rest of the strands.

“Alex, even before I felt this way for you, I knew pain,” Astra presses. “That pain of uncertainty, of second-guessing, of losing comrades and falling short, time and time again. Every planet, staggering losses, my planet… _Krypton_.” Astra squeezes her eyelids closed, her cheeks scrunch up and the slice of her lips contorts into something grotesque. The next confession comes out in a rasp, hitching and irregular: “Alex… if I lost you…”

“Never,” Alex cuts her off. “Never, I swear—”

“Do not apologize for killing me, never again,” Astra opens her eyes and the imperious tone of the general returns. “I am glad for what it prevented.”

“I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Little human, you terrify me,” Astra smiles, her finger returning to Alex’s cheek. “And this world, your Earth without you is a sorry place, indeed. Supergirl is a Kryptonian dropped out of space but there is only one planet that could have cultivated a hero like you. I am so grateful… you are the grace I was waiting for.”

“Astra.”

“My brave little love,” Astra intones. “It takes such courage to open your heart to the unfamiliar, Alex. As you did for Kara, for J’onn. And me… thank you for taking this chance, for letting it be me. I could not love you more if I tried, I do not think.”

“I can’t believe this is how it happened,” Alex says, pushing the pillow up underneath her back, following the shadows that bound and dip over the covers in her bedroom.

“Do you believe this is how I imagined my life or—afterlife—years ago when I enlisted?”

“No,” Alex shakes her head, smiles through her tears. “I don’t believe either of us could’ve predicted this.”

“Unless you possess some foresight you have been keeping from me.”

“How could I keep anything from you? You’re around all the time,” Alex teases, the heat from her crying jag receding to more manageable levels. Astra’s hands are still cool and discarnate, but they’re present. Astra is here, she exists, in the sanctity of Alex’s apartment.

“I am not with you nearly as much as I wish I could be.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Alex smiles, wiping at her wet cheeks. “I annoy the hell out of you, sometimes.”

“And yet I am still senselessly infatuated, brave little love,” Astra answers, seeming to round out the night’s conversation. “You should rest now,” Astra advises. “Your infiltration with the Parumites begins in 4800 hours.”

“Right,” Alex nods, turning over reluctantly, finally flicking off the lamp at her bedside. It takes her some time to settle from being so emotionally keyed up. She is exhausted, perplexed, still no closer to finding out the answer to Astra’s resurrection than they had been a week ago, a month ago, three months gone.

“Astra?”

“Yes?”

“When I get you back, you’ll let me hold you, right?”

“Do you assume I would cede control so easily?”

“No, that’s why I’m putting in the request now,” Alex says. “I’ll need to know you’re real and… and that all of this is actually for me.”

“Alex?”

“I never thought I’d feel this way. Holding you will… I think it’ll really sink in.”

“Then of course,” Astra murmurs, a chill spreading up Alex’s arms despite the heaps of blankets piled atop her. “Brave little love.”

…

…

…

“My general.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex and Alpha team move silently through the complex, a large, abandoned military facility long since grown over with brush and weeds. Glass panes have been shattered, heaps of dust collected in hall corners and cobwebs drooped overhead. Oftentimes on raids, they find themselves in these dark, mildewed facilities because the Department of Defense is like a toddler with too many playthings: it never cleans up after itself.

In this case, barrels upon barrels of experimental chemicals have been stored since Vietnam, chemical weapons the government would like to keep an eye on considering their fairly long shelf-life. However, it wouldn’t do for the public to know that their nation, a great bastion of democracy and freedom, has been hoarding chemical weaponry since long before the Normandy landings. It’s all well and good, keeping dangerous substances far, far away from civilians, but with alien senses, these facilities tend to function like watering holes on the Savannah during a drought. Locales housing concentrated collections of chemicals aliens need for sustenance are, nine times out of ten, teeming with alien lifeforms. This facility is no different. They’re after a dozen or so Parumites, and Alex has taken point for Alpha team, hoping to wrap this up as quickly as possible because things are going to hell in National City.

Kara swears she’s on her way, but Lillian Luther has taken her exploits with Cadmus one step further. Supergirl had her hands full as of three hours ago, fighting alien-after-modified-alien while Alex prepped the team for this mission (they’d been putting it off for weeks, but the Parumites had grown stronger, bolder, and had eventually killed a civilian rancher in their quest to overrun the lands surrounding this facility). And while Kara’s been duking it out around skyscrapers and city boulevards, Alex has been chasing down alien rogue alien lifeforms, shipped all over kingdom come in the process. The amount of hours she’s logged on the jet in the past month probably fulfilled the requirements for a pilot’s commercial license.

It makes her uneasy, because she’s not been able to focus on things happening at home, especially after hers and Astra’s most recent come-to-Rao talk. Astra is back at home, _their_ home, one they’ve carved out together, waiting on Alex to get back so that they can plan and talk and strategize over the best ways to take down Cadmus for good.

The best way they can bring Astra back to Alex’s arms.

“Beta Team leader, all clear on the west hall,” Alex reports, signaling for her squad of six to halt at the entrance of warehouse four.

“Roger that, Alpha leader,” Lucy says through the com.

Alex makes a fist and extends two fingers, indicating the assault formation for when they begin the ambush. She positions three agents against the left wall near the double-door entry, then leads her other two coming in from the right. She’s just able to crack the door and make out an eight-foot Parumite female, hunched over on all fours like a ginormous primate. Their forearms are longer than Alex’s legs, covered in prickly white hairs that emit noxious perspiration.

“Beta team,” Alex calls, “report when in position.”

Alex shoulders her modified M-16, shoves the stock of the weapon into her shoulder and secures it for the small-scale blitzkrieg. She pulls down the face-mask of her helmet but can still hear the barrels banging beyond the door. She tries to indicate with small, practiced hand motions where her agents should charge first.

“Beta team, report,” Alex murmurs again, her anxiety skyrocketing when she hears nothing through the com.

Alex holds three fingers up and mouths _three minutes_ to her team, only to jolt to attention when she hears the barrels crash and the sound of gunfire coming in from the warehouse.

“Beta team!” Alex calls, but hears the shouts of agents through the walls, hears Lucy’s heavy breathing and gunfire sing in her ear. “Go! Go!” Alex shouts, shoving the door to the warehouse open and taking in the scene before her.

Agents are scattered throughout the cavernous space, some on their feet, others on the ground, some held in massive, bone-white claws ten feet in the air. She keeps her sights set on the larger male, the leader of the Parumite pack. The blue ridges along its back look strangely reptilian, despite their hulking statures and Yeti-like colorations. She pops four quick shots of the sedatives into the beast’s hide but can’t know for certain if the solution will take effect before the Parumite rips off Agent Morrison’s head.

“Dawes, shoot to kill!” Alex gives the command as the pack leader howls with rage, as it brings a claw the size of a an elephant’s tusk down, slashing into her torso.

Alex feels the boiling agony of bone striking bone and the gush of blood, spurts and streams and dribbles enough that her boots slip through it and lose their traction. Gunshots and growls and human hollering and alien screeches rattle through her head but Alex can’t move, she’s paralyzed, bleeding out from a wound with the circumference of a linebacker’s thigh. Blood is raining on her, she’s choking on it, and all she sees in her vision is red red _red_ , a cape snapping against the wind and a familiar, breath-stealing chill.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex blinks her eyes open to brightness.

She’s lying on top of some soft cushion, way softer than your standard hospital bed. And there’s no beep of heart monitors, no pinch on the back of her hand or the inside of her elbow that might suggest someone’s shoved an IV into her veins. There’s just white everywhere, immaculate and solid, so white she can’t even tell where the door to the room is. She turns her head to the left and gasps, the entire wall comprised of a seamless glass panel that looks out over a hauntingly familiar cityscape.

There are spires and bridges and antigravity shuttles, looming buildings curved to look like trophies given out at fancy awards ceremonies. There are circular rotundas built so high they brush fluffy white clouds in a cornflower blue sky, and there are trees of all colors on various levels, deepest greens and dappled lilacs, autumn reds and goldenrod yellows to rival a New England November. The view is bright and dazzling and clear, nothing like the haze of gold and crimson that had washed out Argo City when Alex visited Kara’s dream induced by the Black Mercy. She rests inside a building on a much younger Krypton, one that is healthy and thriving but… static.

Nothing moves beyond the windows, not the shuttles, nor any elevators in their shafts with the capability to hurtle up tens of stories in an instant. The breeze blows but there are no birds ( _there were no birds on my planet_ ) no animals and no life, just a discomfiting feeling of serenity.

There are no Kryptonians on Krypton.

“Hello, Alexandra.”

Alex turns back over her right shoulder and there sits Astra, clad in flowing green robes that Spring incarnate would envy, regal and resplendent as the planet beyond the window.

She sits with a sullen expression on an uncomfortable looking white waiting chair, spine straight, hands curled over the silver armrests. Her hair is long and loose and she looks every ounce the general Alex knows her to be.

_Beautiful._

“Astra?”

“Yes love?” she rises, sways in those heavy robes until she sits atop Alex’s bedside, reaches for her, and makes warm, solid contact with her hand.

Alex grips harder immediately, marveling at the touch, testing pressures with each one of her fingers. Her jaw gapes as she pushes first with her pinkie, then her ring and middle fingers, rubs her index along the rough patches at Astra’s knuckles.

_Rough_.

So her hands have seen some damage.

“I can touch you,” Alex manages, speaking through the cumbersome burden placed upon her torso. It is heavy, despite the lack anything covering her beyond a diaphanous white sheet. And it is somewhat difficult to breathe here, though Alex doesn’t know why.

“You can,” Astra answers, dipping down to press a kiss against her forehead.

Astra’s lips are smooth as her knuckles are rough. And her presence is puzzling, _this place_ is puzzling, and it’s all Alex can do not to throw the single cover off and start casing the joint, find some schematics, pinpoint the exits, fall back to everything her training has taught her to consider.

“Astra, we’re… how did we…” Alex sits up and the weight lessens, shifts to something more annoying than taxing. She expects the friction and the drag of the sheet over her body but when she looks down at herself she sees robes, Kryptonian robes, flowy and long and whiter than the room she’s in. She bears no crest on the upper right hand corner, but _Danvers_ is embossed on the material in an elaborate, curlicued calligraphy.

“I am not certain,” Astra answers, “but I have a theory.”

“Care to let me in on it?”

“I would much rather indulge in my selfish desires first,” Astra says, running her index finger over Alex’s cheek, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I will not question my good fortune just yet. How do you feel?”

“Honestly?” Alex shifts again, wiggles her hips against the perfectly plush bedding and twists, preparing to work out the familiar kinks in her spine that miraculously don’t register after her night… or nap… or, brief stint atop this mattress. “I feel wonderful.”

“I am so glad to hear it,” Astra says, glancing toward the window. “Alex, before we shatter this, before something takes this from me… can I please show you Krypton? Can I show you my home?”

“Of course,” Alex tells her, taking Astra’s proffered hand. “I’d want no one else.”

“Even Kara?” Astra asks, tugging Alex up from the bed, leading her to a pressurized door in the wall that slides seamlessly open upon their approach.

“Kara didn’t picture Krypton like this,” Alex responds. “Why is it—”

“Kara never knew a healthy planet,” Astra says. “And even I can see that this construct, this dream, wherever we are—it has been altered. Embellished. This is Krypton at its height, what I was working to rebuild.”

“An ideal?” Alex asks, stepping into an elevator made completely of glass and dark blue metals, steel or platinum or tungsten molded into the framework of these amazing buildings. “It’s not… there’s no way this is real.”

“It was,” Astra answers her, looking out over the city as they descend to a lower level, the elevator slowing before they reach the ground. “It was all real, everything before us. We could have preserved this.”

“Astra, you know it wasn’t your fau—”

“Ahead is the High Council’s Hall,” Astra steps out to escape Alex’s consolation. She’s heard it enough times in Alex’s apartment, back on Earth, back where Alex was on a mission, a mission where they were trying to contain the Daxamites, no… not the Daxamites… the Hellgrammites? Lunarians?

“Would you like to see it?”

“What?” Alex asks, shaking her head and remembering Astra is right beside her, Krypton is before them, and she doesn’t feel any pain.

“Our government hall,” Astra explains. “There are portraits and Alura’s annex and the military records kept on site for all planetary deployments within the First System. We do not have to, I only thought—”

“No, I want to go,” Alex says, taking Astra’s hand in her own. She’s wanted this for months, to be able to grab Astra’s hand and revel in that rough warmth. To curl her fingers round Astra’s and cling so tightly no one could pull them apart.

Of course, there’s no one here to even attempt to separate them. And though she feels Astra at her side, _she_ feels different, somehow, a difference that is indescribable in how not-quite-right it seems. Her surroundings are miraculous, and she can take it all in—the colors and the whisper of a breeze against the exposed skin at her neck, along the back of her free hand. The air feels lighter, perhaps less humid than the coastal positioning of National City. Hyssop and spearmint scents flood her nose, a crisp, sharp sort of smell she would never associate with the heaviness of the air on Earth. The sensations are there and she experiences them all in turn, but it still feels incomplete somehow, lacking in a way she cannot articulate.

But Alex agrees with Astra, and for the moment, she will not second-guess what Astra sees as good fortune. She follows along and does her best to imprint every sight, sound, and story about the remnants of Argo City onto her brain. She does her best to memorize the cadence of Astra’s voice and the heft of her hand as she holds on; she keeps pace with her, adjusts her steps as if they are walking together on a sidewalk to the Chinese place down the block from her apartment, and not over massive bridges that sway between skyscrapers, lined with potted plants and hanging greenery that overflow from the edges and tangle in the open air.

A word like _impressive_ seems belittling in the context of Krypton, of a society so advanced they’ve sent military generals to hundreds of solar systems, they’ve patented self-sustaining agriculture, they’ve gotten the whole flying car/drone/personal aircraft thing down with no problem. Alex follows where Astra leads, and doesn’t feel compelled in the slightest to get back to wherever she came from.

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

“It will be eventide soon,” Astra tells her, stopping beside the entrance of a large glass mansion, one of the many buildings-within-a-building Alex has only just now come to see as normal.

This massive, pyramid-like glass high-rise, for instance, has the diameter of four football fields and houses many smaller constructions, free-standing castles that only rise four and five flights above them. Then there are a handful of stacked complexes twenty- and thirty-stories tall that look like exclusive condos (which apparently are at the same level as tenement housing, judging from Astra’s snide little twitch at the nostril). They are all encased in one glass building, an architectural feat that would dwarf construction cranes in Dubai and Shanghai. But part of being on the assembly teams is reaping the benefits of what you helped to build, which explains why so-called common laborers shared a living space with the Kryptonian aristocracy.

_We are encouraged to mix with those of separate classes, here_ , Astra had told her. _It keeps crime rates low when the Military Guild is forced to protect those of high society and low within the same sectors_.

Alex had then asked about assigned housing and Astra had said yes, the Central Registries were strict and detailed, but that is how it had always been done. It had then led to a debate about Big-Brother-esque privacy violations and what constituted an independent citizenry. Astra was dismissive and Alex combative, and only when Alex pushed Astra up against the wall of a garden and stole a heated kiss among the stones did the argument subside and make way for more pleasant exchanges.

_We are not so different, you and I._

_That, Astra, is where you and I agree._

It’s like they’re outside, but they really _aren’t._ Glass panels are drawn back and plants hang everywhere, while sumptuous gardens of exotic flowers have been sporadically positioned between the lustrous domicile exteriors. There are opaque glass walls that separate the houses from each other, providing inklings of privacy without sacrificing the light. Even as the night draws closer, Alex doesn’t seem to think it grows _darker,_ necessarily. Krypton’s atmosphere bleeds a clear and vibrant violet and the night sky floods with stars, humongous and miniscule and hazy overhead.

“Would you like to come inside?” Astra asks, mounting the steps to one of several free-standing halls, magnificent, austere, and a whole lot of other adjectives that make Alex feel small.

“Here? Is it like, the Engineers Corps of Snooty Architectural History or something?”

“This is my home,” Astra answers, and Alex’s jaw falls slack.

“This is your _house_?”

“The first property I acquired, though I did not spend much time here,” Astra says, and Alex can hear the touch of removed observation in her voice. “It is quite lovely, now that I look at it again.”

She walks up large stone steps and faces the massive columns on the portico, accented by the series of curved double doors beyond. Two balconies split the center entrance from overhead, but they don’t connect. Vines wrap round the partitions and unfamiliar crests are curved into the sconces. Alex glances upward and watches as the home flickers to life, illuminated by soft bulbs that aren’t bulbs and flames that aren’t fire, for Krypton has found a way to harness light energy that Earth likely never will.

It is all very beautiful and very intimidating and it makes Alex’s stomach turn.

“Is this where you lived with… with him?”

“Not for very long,” Astra answers, running her hand along the curved stone railing. “He was often across the city in the TriStern Sector, where he kept an apartment above his lab. He had his evenings there, his trysts, his experiments…even when he was here, we did not always share a room.”

“Was that customary?”

“No, but ours was not a marriage entered into for love, or even affection. Though I do believe he grew to care for me.”

Once she reaches the top of the stairs, Astra leans her elbows against the railing and looks out over the grounds of her estate. Water from fountains trickles nearby and it’s the only thing Alex can hear beyond the shuffling of her own feet. She always knew Kara was high-born but didn’t really _get it_ until this exact instant, until she came face-to-face with Astra in robes, backlit by vaporous beams and posed before a mansion that would make Cat Grant or Max Lord or Lena Luther feel inferior.

“It would be difficult,” Alex begins, placing one hand on the railing and making her way up to Astra, “not to feel deeply for you after so much time spent in close quarters.”

Astra attempts a smile for her benefit but it doesn’t develop fully. The view is picturesque and immaculate, everything Astra hoped Krypton could be. But hope is not reality, no matter how desperately Kara wishes it could be. This Krypton is fabrication and they both know it. Alex watches the reserved melancholy linger, watches it etch deep furrows onto Astra’s face and remain despite the glorious sky over head, despite the romantic fountains and gardens below.

“We should go in.”

“We don’t have to,” Alex says, wrapping one arm round Astra’s waist and pulling her against her side. “We don’t have to do anything but stay out here and look at the city.”

She feels Astra shake her head beside her, feels the tension of Astra’s abdomen coiling beneath her fingertips. Now it’s not just her head but her shoulders, muscles spasming out of control, her entire frame overcome with an anguished sob.

“Astra—”

“This is not real.”

“I know.”

“None of it is _real,_ Alex.”

“I know,” Alex says, moving behind Astra to hold her steadier, to support her when her arms fail to hold her up on the railing. Her jerky movements compromise her stance, her frame, usually so rigid and stalwart and unfailing, but not under the weight of a healthy Krypton—a healthy, thriving, abandoned and fake Krypton.

“I’m real,” Alex whispers against her ear, repeats it for as long as Astra mourns, mumbles it into her neck when her legs give out and when her sobs echo off the glass walls beyond. The stars are endless and Astra is broken and Alex doesn’t know what any of it means.

“None of it,” Astra keeps mumbling, clutching Alex's forearms and holding too tight—with average pressure that doesn’t crush her.

Somehow, on this counterfeit planet, their strength is matched.

“I’m real, and I love you,” Alex tells her, thinking back to a night in an Earthly apartment building with a ghost in her kitchen, a hallucination that seemed so true she felt herself spiraling out of control. “You have so much to live for, Astra. So many reasons to keep fighting. I hope I’m one of them.”

“Alex—”

“Shh…” she soothes her, holds her from behind, sinks down at the top landing of the steps as Astra falls between her legs, her back pressed solidly against Alex’s front. Alex keeps her wrapped close, her own arms cradling Astra’s shaking frame from underneath her armpits, draped across a chest, physically holding her together as the night deepens and Astra’s cries abate.

“Tell me about your First System,” Alex asks of her, and they could be back in Alex’s bed, beginning one of her earnest inquiries about Astra’s travels. “Everything about the solar system surrounding you. How many planets?”

“Planets?”

“How many in the First System, Astra?”

“Twenty—twenty-three,” Astra answers, trying to breathe through her convulsions. “But… that includes dwarf planets, even those uninhabited.”

“How many have you been to?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Alex soothes her, pulling her hair back over her neck, unable to get at her skin thanks to the high collar of the robes. For some reason it seems more intimate this way, touching fully clothed, the sole people inhabiting a city, likely a planet, with Rao’s other eye rising to watch over them. “And the moons? How many moons do the planets—”

“Kiss me,” Astra says, twisting in her embrace.

“Astra—”

“Kiss me, please,” Astra clutches at her white tunic, her fingernails digging into the material and tugging Alex close. “I need to know you are real, I need to _know_ —”

Alex removes her hand from Astra’s waist and places it at the back of her head, pressing their heads together as their lips find each other’s, as their senses shift and expand like an overgrown universe. Alex knows Krypton isn’t real and she knows the easy feeling in her body is wrong, foul, imaginary, for she’s been waking with soreness and the oncoming wear of age ever since her earliest physical training sessions.

And kissing Astra here, on the floor of a Kryptonian porch, while heated and close and registering as sensation within her body—it’s still not everything. It’s still not the reality that she wants for the both of them.

Astra kisses and sucks and bites and licks at her, trying out different speeds, pressures, and patterns to reassure herself that Alex won’t dissolve beneath her fingertips. And Alex allows it because she has no idea where to go from here or how to get them back to where they were.

“…my chambers?”

“What?” Alex whispers into Astra’s lips.

“I asked if you would accompany me to my chambers.”

“You sure?”

“It is the only thing I am sure of here, Alexandra,” Astra replies, climbing off of her and tugging her up to her feet.

She leads Alex through hallways plated with rose-gold and reflective surfaces, across carpets softer than quicksand. There are fanciful lantern spheres and a portrait of Astra in her full military regalia, metals pinned across the red sash and no trace of a smile on her lips. She pulls Alex along until they reach a set of double doors that lead to Astra’s entire wing of the house. There are no lights this deep within the mansion, but Krypton’s purple sky illuminates the bedroom once Astra presses a button and electronic darkening panels retract into the wall. Another button, and the glass windows recede as well, a chill from the exterior floating into her quarters as Astra removes the first layer of her tunic.

“Allow me?” Astra asks Alex shyly, moving round to unhook a clasp, to flick her finger and loosen the cinch holding the long drape of fabric over her body. White material pools at her feet and Alex stands in the light of three moons, naked, watching as Astra removes her robes while watching her city.

They fall into bed together and Alex tries to reassure her: _we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want_ —but Astra does want, pulls Alex on top of her and kisses her so fiercely there’s no mistaking her desire.

When Astra slips her hand between Alex’s legs she shudders, repositions to straddle Astra’s hips and allow the finger to slide inside of her; and when Alex reaches down to Astra’s core she tenses, whimpers, and Alex waits for her to adjust before moving gently inside of her. Alex feels the strain on the one arm she’s using to prop herself up because they continue for a long time. Alex knows this isn’t about climaxing, not like it had been back in her apartment when everything was new and unbelievable. It’s about comfort and presence and the feel of one another when everything else feels so wrong. Alex loves Astra’s fingers inside her, her thumb rubbing against her, the hand cradling her in the web of digits and keeping her close enough so that nothing about their love-making can be misconstrued for lust.

“Love you,” Alex murmurs.

Astra kisses her collar bone because that’s the only part of her Astra can reach. She begins moving faster, losing what minor consolation their slow pace originally afforded them. It’s difficult to fight her body’s reactions but Alex takes over the pace, moves her hips slower and forces Astra to relax her movements.

“Astra,” Alex pauses her stroking and dips down to kiss her tears away. “I _love_ you.”

“I know.”

“You do. You do know. What’s happening out there isn’t real, but this is, okay?” Alex kisses her eyelids, gasping when they flutter back open and Alex sees stars staring back at her. “You and me, on Earth or Krypton or hell or in the light… we’re real.”

“Brave little love—”

“Brave for you,” Alex reassures her, resuming her rubbing, keeping them connected for as long as their bodies can stand it. They do both come eventually, not together, but in the night, and Krypton hears them. Astra cries for her people and cries for her planet and cries Alex’s name over and over and over again.

Alex just cries for Astra.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Where are you going?” Astra asks.

Alex has taken the sheets of the bed and wrapped them round her naked torso, moved to the edge of the mattress in the vain hope that Astra will rest without her.

“Exploring.”

“At this hour?”

“I’m just thirsty, Astra,” she says, feeling her way to the back wall. “I don’t think I could make it to a kitchen without breaking my neck… you have a washroom?”

“A few more feet to the right, and there is a panel at shoulder height,” Astra says. “Press it, and the door should open, the lights are self-sensing. Though we don’t have traditional taps, here, there is water in a cooling unit beside our basins.”

“You keep a minifridge by the tub?” Alex teases, finding the panel and pressing it once.

“Something like that.”

“That’s my girl,” Alex says, slipping through the doorway. But the moment she does, that awkward weight comes back to her torso. The not-quite-rightness settles in with full-force, and Alex feels a vice of clogging pressure grind against her temples.

“Alex?”

Alex can’t answer because she can’t feel her voice. Instead of cool mint and hyssop it’s hot brick and potstickers, bad Chinese takeout and the couch she got rid of after one too many hangovers in grad school.

“Alex!”

Alex turns over her shoulder but Astra and Krypton and her senses are fading behind her, replaced by an insubstantial sensation and the familiar décor of Kara’s apartment interior.

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why must i put them through PAIN????!!!!!
> 
> sry 'bout the wait between chaps with this one. finally got to crackin' once the holiday rolled in and of course my outline decided to be a little jerk face man and expaaaaaaaaaand, so this is HOPEFULLY gonna stay at three chappies. but i wanted to upload since it's been a month and i'm a terrible person for not having updated sooner. hope all the fluff and sad love makes up for the wait
> 
> it also really bothers me that alex is the only one not to wear a helmet during the raids no matter how awesome her hair looks


	3. it still takes two to make a house a home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot adhere to an outline to save my life y'all forgive me

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Alex maintains a love-hate relationship with Kara’s—previously, _her_ —apartment. It wasn’t superficial problems like molding, or disagreements with the landlord, or outdated appliances or the any of the other quotidian things one might take issue with in an apartment that gave her such nerves, nor was the rent extravagant for the spacious studio. When she’d first arrived, gentrification hadn’t inundated the area with hipster repurposers; plus, being on the top floor sans elevator meant that she was willing to sacrifice convenience for affordability.

She’d been given a stipend during her first semester as a GA at UCNC, so that money covered utilities and books and necessities. Not much else, though. Alex could remember her mother’s tight smile, the quavering uncertainty in her voice when she’d asked, _are you sure, Alex?_ when Alex had walked her laptop about the property and given Eliza a tour via Skype. _At least now Kara can come stay with me without having to sleep on the floor of a dorm room._

Her mother had agreed shortly thereafter.

This place suited Kara far better than it suited her. Kara’s curtains were flowing and sheer; pale pink swirls or daffodil patterns were neatly draped over the floor-length glass panels, and the tiniest of pseudo-balconies was awash in living greenery throughout the year.

When Alex had lived here, she’d hated the windows most of all. The sun would stream in and bounce off of the exposed brick at an ungodly hour after a night-long bender; and, knowing herself at the time, Alex wouldn’t have made it to the back corner of her studio where her extra-long twin mattress butted up against the wall, safely hidden from the sunny morning abomination by a darkened partition Kara has now repurposed and uses as a clothing rack. Alex often found herself passed out on the couch, awoken by a piercing light and a pounding pressure.

One morning, after she was notified her first thesis draft hadn’t passed the board by a 4-3 margin, she was likewise woken by an acidic smell, a curdled, sour-sick splotch of vomit having just missed the waste basket—instead adhering its chunky composition to the hardwood of her apartment floors.

She had scrubbed and scrubbed and silently cried, her stomach lurching at the smell of distilled bleach. Alex had also run a brush through her hair, tidied up running black eye liner, and chugged a liter of bottled water because Kara was supposed to be by that afternoon. It had been the second week of Kara’s sophomore year at UCNC (of course she’d followed Alex) and they were due for some sister-time. Nevermind that the elder had barely made it home the previous evening.

That’s when Kara was the priority.

Is _still_ the priority.

Alex remembers all of this about the apartment, but she is not often here when Kara is not. Everything feels blurred about the edges of her mind, like she’s looking through her microscope at a new specimen but hasn’t adjusted the settings yet. It’s dark out, and it must be late, later than usual, because when she scans the streets below cars are parked and lights are snuffed, and curtains are closed in neighboring windows. She hears the keys in the lock at the door and turns, but only then does she notice the lights in the studio are also turned off.

Strange, Alex thinks, because she’s been able to see perfectly well so far.

There’s the corner of the bar where she bruised her hip, stumbling in drunk with some liaison who couldn’t fuck away her pain.

There’s the refrigerator with the door that sticks, the one she’d wrench open time and time again to retrieve her boozey bottles.

And there’s the exposed bit of brick she’d punched when she’d been kicked out of the grad program—she’d broken two fingers and lied to Kara, lied to her mom, and then Googled how porous a brick apartment interior might be, and whether it would absorb the patch of blood that had been painted across it from her despairing blow.

The keys turn the lock and there’s a hand on the handle, the lights come up, and Kara steps inside.

She looks exhausted.

“Kara,” Alex says immediately, crossing to take the big black duffel from her shoulder. Kara walks right past her and frowns as she tosses the bag on top of her kitchen counter. “Kara, what’s wro—”

“Hey, here’s the other one.” Lucy Lane steps in, clad in standard black DEO duds, circles of fatigue drawn low and deep at the bottom of her eye sockets. Her left jaw is purpling along the ridge and her hair is pulled back tight, half-dry, as if she’s only just gotten out of the shower. She favors her left side and limps over the threshold, shutting the door and turning the lock as Kara retrieves two glasses from the cabinet and pours them both some water.

“Thank you, Lucy. You really didn’t have to follow me home like this.”

“You weren’t coming home otherwise, so yeah, I did have to.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Lucy tells her.

Alex hates that she’s not even been _acknowledged._ She knows it’s late and her head feels a little fuzzy (so does her chest, for that matter), but the least they could do is say _hey_. Kara can get careless sometimes, but Alex expects more from Lucy. They were just in the van, on the way to the warehouse, to catch… to raid… to…

White streaks across her vision and Alex clutches suddenly at her abdomen, wondering at how casually and suddenly such violent pain can overwhelm her.

“Kara,” Alex begins, but she’s ignored by the pair of women in the kitchen. “Kara, seriously,” she continues, moving to clasp her sister by the shoulder, “something feels wrong and I—”

Her hand drifts right through Kara’s shoulder.

“Oh!”

Kara turns swiftly and shudders, and Lucy cocks her head to the side.

“What is it?”

“Just… cold,” Kara answers, rubbing her curled knuckle against her eyelid. “I don’t know, I just… I thought I _heard_ her there, for a second.”

“You should get some sleep, Kara,” Lucy advises. “Remember what J’onn said. At least six hours or you’re not getting back into the med wing.”

“You're gonna stop me?”

“I’d knock you flat, as tired as you are.”

“…even with your ribs?” Kara asks quietly.

“Kara,” Lucy says, dark, shining eyes aged and comforting beyond her years. “It’s not your fault.”

Alex feels more spectator than spector, watching the back-and-forth between the two women with a sort of quiet reverence. She’s been Kara’s sounding board for who knows how long, but it’s reassuring to see someone else take up the mantle, to watch as Kara relieves herself of the burden and spreads it out on capable shoulders: Lucy’s, J’onn’s, hers, Winn’s, James’s.

“You’ve wrapped things up with Lena, and Lillian’s court date is already set. And you know, Vasquez offered to take the evening shift. I told her to call me the instant anything changes.”

Kara’s begun crying during Alex’s distraction, silent, hot tears that crawl over her gaunt cheeks and rob her of her joy.

“I can’t _lose_ her, Lucy.”

“You’re not going to!” Lucy moves into Kara, throws her right hand over her shoulders as Kara dips down, carefully holding Lucy’s right side with one shaking hand. “She has to rest, Kara, we can’t expect recovery overnight.”

“If I’d have just _been_ there—”

“Who knows what would’ve happened?” Lucy answers quietly. “Alex would not want you to tear yourself up like this, Kara.”

_Shit._

She needs to find a pen. Alex vaults over Kara’s couch and concentrates, stares down at her hands and curses déjà vu for its twisted sense of humor. “Come on, come on,” Alex mumbles, ignoring Kara and Lucy in the kitchen, instead clutching and grasping and uncurling her fingers over the pen resting atop the coffee table. And, just as Alex had feared, as Alex had sensed the moment she found herself in this apartment, materialized only once Kara came close to the door—she knows she will not be able to pick it up.

Not immediately, anyway.

_Shit_.

“—her wishes about life support?” Alex hears Lucy ask.

_Oh, shit. Double shit._

“No, I…believe it or not, we never talked about that,” Kara mumbles, swiping sloppily at her face. Her nose doesn’t run, doesn’t clog and Kara rarely sniffles, but her tears flow just as forcefully as human tears do. “Even after I found out about the DEO, it’s not something…she’s so _young_ , Lucy.”

“Even young people… I mean, it might be the lawyer talking in me, but I’ve already drafted my will. Did Lois’s for her, too. Not that it’s something we need to be concerned with, Kara. Remember what Dr. Dupreet said?”

“Coming off the breathing machine Friday,” Kara nods and Alex dips her head. No wonder her chest feels like it’s not attached to her abdomen. “But a collapsed lung—”

“She’s young, Kara, you just said so. And in peak physical condition. Time and rest, both of which you need right now, too.”

“There was so much blood—”

“Kara, stop—”

“When I picked her up, just…” Kara holds her hands out and her fingers shake. They splay flat in the open air and Kara stares at them, her tanned, unblemished skin clean for the moment, but Alex wonders if Kara’s hand were as red with her blood after the infiltration as Alex’s had been when she’d pulled the sword from Astra’s—

Oh.

Oh, wait a second.

_Blood_?

Blood from the battle, blood from the stab wound, running like magma in a heated river from her organs...

_Could there be something more to the Kryptonian saying?_

_Blood bonds us all, Little One._

“Oh my god, holy… holy shit,” Alex grumbles, but the room doesn’t hear her.

_Astra_.

Astra back at her apartment, back… somewhere… Alex had gone somewhere after the raid, had gone… had been… not living, certainly not that, because if she’s gathered anything from the broken bits of conversation playing out in the kitchen behind her, it’s that her body is struggling on life support in the DEO’s med wing because her torso got mangled during the raid, and Kara—darling, kind, compassionate and brave Kara—had at one point been bathed in her blood.

But what of Astra?

Alex hasn’t seen her since she left for the DEO the night before the raid. And time... she can't be sure of how much time has passed since she last spoke to her. It could be as little as 48 hours or as long as a week, for all Alex can figure. And knowing her sister, that puppy-dog pout power and her manipulative, pleading eyes, Alex bets this is the first time the doctors have forced Kara from her body’s bedside since the accident happened. As mandated by J’onn, and supervised by Lucy.

So how long has Astra been gone?

Where _is_ she?

“I’m setting an alarm,” Kara insists, heading round the screen to where her bed sits out of sight. Moments later, she emerges with her charger. “You take the bed, I’m on the couch.”

“Kara, no, I’ll take the—”

“Your ribs are bruised and you’re only two days out of a concussion, Lucy. You’re taking the bed.”

“How will I know if you fly off into the night to go do something dumb and heroic?”

“Trust me, Lucy, I don’t feel very heroic right now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s… it’s not okay,” Kara hiccups, plugging the charger into the wall outlet behind the end table. She sticks the wire into the port and places her hands on her hips. Her shrug is loaded. Defeated. “But thank you for being here, anyway.”

“You know I would.”

“Night Lucy.”

“Night Kara.”

“Night, Kara,” Alex says, settling into the arm chair opposite the couch, concentrating, thinking concrete, solid thoughts, staring at the pen in the dark as her sister settles uncomfortably on the couch at her side.

“Alex?” Kara whispers, and even if she can’t hear her, Alex answers.

“Yeah, Kara?”

“You don’t get to leave me yet.”

“I’m not. I promise.”

“I’m going to do better next time. I’m going to be there, like you always are for me.”

“I know you did the best you could,” Alex tells her, watching as her fingers float through the pen once more. Her nails sink into the stained wood of the coffee table abd Alex chuckles, imagining she's offended the splinters. But it’s _frustrating_. She wonders how long it took Astra to go from observer to influence. She’ll have to ask if she ever makes her way back to her.

“I love you.”

“I love you, Kara.”

 

* * *

 

 

Kara and Lucy leave six and a half hours later.

Alex has managed to knock the pen from the coffee table to the floor.

Once the apartment door shuts, things get hazy around the edges again, and she wakes to brilliant, blinding sunlight.

 

* * *

 

 

Gritty shores have always been Alex’s safe haven.

Escape.

Freedom from every expectation.

There’s water and there’s the sun and a rock to hang her feet off of, foam and salt tugging her out to sea.

It’s where she wants to be at the end of it all, her family safe in the house behind her, the sun setting effortlessly in the west.

Water rushes over her and she coughs after inhaling an entire gallon of the ocean. She rolls to her side, hacking like a smoker as she looks up, squints and scans the shoreline to the north. She keeps coughing though her astonishment, because it can’t be… but she turns, her fit subdued, to the cliffs in the south.

The house.

_Her_ house.

Eliza and Kara and the neighborhood kids, her best friend Vicki Donahue from high school, her mother’s parents who come down for visits at Christmas and for her birthday, eager to escape the Indiana permacloud and revel in the California sun. But the house looks quiet on the cliff beyond, no doors opening, no cars starting and taking off to the lab, or to school, or the store, or… or…

_Dad?_

“Dad?” Alex murmurs before she can catch herself.

Water tickling her ankles pulls her attention back to the shoreline. No barking gulls float on the breeze. And Alex notices a distinct absence of guppies and shellfish as the foam advances and retreats against the sand. She’s in her favored wetsuit from a decade past, unzipped and gathered about her waistline, so the sun can hit her shoulders. It warms the exposed skin around her patterned blue swim top, and Alex momentarily thinks about sunscreen—before remembering she should probably figure out how she got here in the first place before jumping immediately to her mother's lecture on melanoma. The rocks are the same as she remembers, discarded bits of stick and driftwood washing ashore before being drawn back, back into the waves where they're granted their final repose.

She’s so caught up in nostalgia she almost misses the other body curled up down the beach: a heap of limbs, pale skin, and flowing, sea-soaked hair.

“H-Hey!” Alex yells, scrambling to her feet, yanking apart the elastic leash connecting her ankle to the surfboard bobbing at her side. “H-Hey! What’s—are you okay?!” She crunches over shattered shells as she runs north, sprinting faster and faster once she realizes the body is limp and loose—unconscious? dead?—pushed carelessly about by the waves as the surf gushes relentlessly.

Closer, twenty yards away, Alex sees the white streak in the flow of dark, curly hair.

“Astra!” she yells, stride lengthening, heart hammering, all for Astra, her safety, her heart, her love. “ASTRA!”

Alex collapses at her side and drags her out of the waves. She’s unconscious, clammy to the touch, jaw slack and eyelids drawn down over her brilliant, multi-faceted irises.

“Come on, come _on_!”

Alex pumps recklessly against her torso, can feel her again, touch her in that insubstantial way she had back on Krypton—

Krypton… had… had she really spent last night on Krypton?

Had she _forgotten_ her night on Krypton?

Healthy, thriving, abandoned and lonely.

Immaculate Krypton.

Had she toured the courts of the High Council? Had she gawked at the gilded staircase that curved toward Alura’s office; marveled at the spires of not-quite-glass, crystalline and nouveau and housing mansions inside of clear, prismatic skyscrapers; studied the flora of indeterminate species, verdant, enchanting, magentas mixed with aquamarine and onyx distilled to its deepest hues—had she really experienced all of that foreign magic?

Had she soothed Astra when she collapsed on the portico under the pale, lavender light of three moons? Had they undressed quietly in the dark? Had she lain atop her, swiped tears for populations from her sharp cheeks and strangled her sorrows with kisses and touches and promises she probably couldn’t keep?

Had she told her how precious she is?

How strong?

How beautiful and driven and innocent—how it is unnecessary for her to bear the sins of her people.

“Astra, _please_.”

Alex scoops down and breathes life back into her, as much life as can be inspired in this coastal purgatory. She presses against the chest she mutilated and curses herself, thinking that if she had only been quicker on the roof, if J’onn had waited 30 more seconds, if she’d taken the time to form the relationship they’d need for reconciliation during Astra’s torture at Lane’s hands—if, if, _if_ —would she still have fallen so deeply?

Astra spits up saltwater and gags, streams spewing from her lips like a poorly sculpted fountain subject. Coughing and sputtering, she rolls to the side but Alex doesn’t remove her hands, too thankful to be touching skin that is flexing and contracting— _living?_ —beneath her fingertips.

“Astra?!”

“ _Rao_!—why is your afterlife so _wet_?”

Alex tackles her; she throws her arms round Astra’s shoulders and they barrel into the sand. She kisses her neck and cheeks, all over her face, haunted no longer by Astra’s spirit but the possibility that that spirit might not _be there_ once she moved on to—wherever they were at present.

“Remove yourself, Alexandra,” Astra snips, pushing against her shoulder and sitting up to cradle her head in her hands. She grunts and snorts like a barn animal, shaking her water-logged head against the gentle incline of the dunes.

“Sorry—I—I’m sorry!” Alex says, placing a careful hand along Astra’s lower back. Her spine curves elegantly beneath Alex’s touch, like an anatomical asymptote. How fitting, Alex muses, as she traces the bumps along her wet alien backbone. Astra has always been something of an incalculable equation, but right now, with Astra at her side again, Alex feels as if she’s on the brink of solving everything. “I was worried,” Alex murmurs, combing Astra’s torrent of tight, damp curls back from her face. “I thought you were hurt, that you’d broken something or were cut or bleeding or—”

_Oh, right._

_Right._

_The blood._

“Oh,” Alex breathes, realization dawning, something clicking snugly and aligning miraculously in her head. “Astra.”

“I’m… un-uninjured,” Astra stutters, grasping at parts of her body, as if she can’t believe she’s been washed up all in one piece. She reaches for Alex’s hand and twines their fingers together, grips her harder, blinks, lashes fluttering, before squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

“Hey…” Alex says. “You’re okay.”

Astra shakes her head and sobs suddenly, cries out with no forewarning so loudly Alex thinks she truly _is_ harmed, hurt or damaged without being able to pinpoint the source of the pain. She still has her knees bent and her feet ankle-deep in the sand, her head cradled in one hand and dipped down as she hunches forward, shoulders convulsing as she gathers herself.

“I’m sorry, I… I’m shaken, yes, but unharmed.” She squeezes Alex’s hand harder.

“What happened?” Alex asks. “I left you and then—I saw Kara’s place, Astra. I think… I think I was in an accident,” Alex spouts out all the information she can before it slips away. “I forgot Krypton and you and everything that you’d shown me and—”

“You forgot me?” Astra asks, twisting sideways with a violent twitch to lock eyes with Alex. “Alexandra, you forgot—”

“No, not _you_ , you,” Alex clarifies, dipping down to cup Astra’s cheek, blinking back manic, confusing tears. “I remembered everything—the past few months in the apartment, bits and pieces of the raid—”

“The Parumites?”

“Yes,” Alex nods, bringing her other hand up to Astra’s face, scooping the loopy, saturated hair from her temple and combing it behind Astra’s ear.

_So gorgeous._

“I’ve been wandering Krypton…” Astra confesses, turning slightly to kiss Alex’s palm. “Alone. I saw you disappear and I thought…I believed... I am so confused, Alex.”

“I was injured in the raid,” Alex says. “Badly.”

“No,” Astra mutters, shaking her head in Alex’s hands. Her fingers fly up to clutch at the grip Alex has on her cheeks. “Alex, no, you can’t have been… if you’re here with me it must be—”

“It’s the blood,” Alex cuts her off, because as frightened as Astra is, as uncertain as everything is between them, and with Kara, with the DEO, with the actual _world_ they once inhabited, Alex knows she’s on the cusp of something important. “Your blood on my hands. My blood, from the raid…Kara picked me up—”

“Alex, please, no—”

“My blood on _Kara’s_ hands, Astra,” Alex says, pulling her knee closer to Astra's body. "It doesn't matter who killed... it's about the  _blood_."

She falls from her crouched position on her knees to her right hip, sand caking her legs and the thighs of her wet suit. Sand. Gritty, raw sand. It reminds her of rashes and wipeouts, burning strawberries on her forearms after physical feats gone awry. Sand is warm and smooth but it burns and itches; it’s simultaneously comforting and annoying and challenging and familiar. Alex has found herself buried in it neck-deep on more than one occasion. And now,  there’s sand on Astra’s collarbones; a trail of it dribbles down her forearm and congregates in patches around her navel. It’s not as gruesome as blood, but perhaps there is significance to the sand, too. To Krypton. To her apartment, and to Kara’s.

It must all be connected.

_Has_ to be.

“You’re not… you are not dead, are you?” Astra asks her, finding the courage to release the lethal grip on Alex’s fingers, the fingers that caress her own face. Alex sees the relief flood Astra, watches as she sighs and relaxes once her skin loosens against the phantom digits splayed over her jawline.

“No… you’re not quite rid of me, yet,” Alex remarks, smirking in the sunlight.

Astra blinks several times against the skyward spotlight, then allows her hands to wander. She touches the dip of Alex’s waist, the folded parts of muscle where her wetsuit is bunched up around her hips. Her fingers jot along Alex’s arms, dusting away large, bothersome patches of sand that seem grafted to her skin. And soon enough, she erupts: she gathers Alex up in her arms and yanks her close; pulls her flush as she rises to her knees and buries her face in her neck; she grabs and squeezes and takes handfuls of Alex, melts into her, must taste the sea salt and sun radiating from the creases where Alex’s shoulder meets her throat.

“I thought… I believed it was really the end. Me, alone, on a planet I never saved, after losing a people I kept fighting for,” Astra laments, huffing laboriously, fingers flitting and gaze roving and voice quivering. Irresolute action. Hesitation, wariness… _fear._ “You disappeared so suddenly, melted away like ice in this infernal heat.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Alex reassures her, returning every doubtful touch with a steady hand. “But I think that’s how this works.”

“How… how what works?”

“We go to heaven,” Alex answers, looking out at the ocean flanking her from the west. “Or… some version of it. Purgatory. Whatever—I guess—whatever we imagine an afterlife might be. Even though it’s not… we’re not quite there yet.”

“This is your… your afterlife?”

“Gimme a fruity cocktail and a jet-ski and we’d be pretty damn close to paradise,” Alex sighs, finally working up the courage to dive in for Astra’s mouth. “Can I—”

“Please.”

They kiss languidly, burning and slow, attacked by irritating sand and—at least for Alex—several working hypotheses.

When they part, Astra pushes her away and falls back to her spot dug out on the dune, withdrawing when Alex reaches for her. “It is too warm in your afterlife, Alex.”

“Too warm, too wet,” Alex chuckles, noting that in the sunlight, Astra sports a pattern of freckles on the apples of her cheeks she’s never noticed before. “The company isn’t terrible, though, right?”

Astra makes fruitless attempts to brush the sand from her arms, but with every stroke more sand that had been attached to her fingers rubs off and sticks against her skin. She sighs, defeated, recognizing a lost battle when she sees it.

“The company is perfectly tolerable,” Astra answers, pushing her reluctance aside and sidling closer to where Alex sits, knees propped up and elbows resting atop them. Alex stares out at the ocean and takes quick glances at Astra, enjoying the ease of the moment, until Astra speaks again. “I had hoped to see my sister here, though.”

“I thought… I thought I’d see my father,” Alex mumbles, reaching toward her left to grab a long piece of sea grass. She needs something to do with her hands. Bending the stalk back and forth over itself, she twists it round her fingers until it cuts into the flesh. Sturdy stalk. Harsh environment. Only strong things grow on the seaboard.

“He is not in that terrible place you’ve spoken of?” Astra asks her. “Cadmus?”

“A ruse,” Alex responds. “For me… for Kara.”

“If there is no one here, Alexandra, none save us, I mean—”

“You don’t think anyone else might follow us… like, when they die,” Alex finishes for her.

The ocean sings to them for a few moments. Alex ponders the possibility of an afterlife without all of her loved ones. She’s not the spiritual type, even though Kara is, Astra… maybe even moreso, having reached adulthood under Rao’s red sun. Whatever (mis)conception Alex had of an afterlife, it certainly never involved soothing distressed Kryptonians she’d previously run-through with a radioactive battle sword.

“What if I never see Kara again,” Astra whispers. “What if I never apologize—”

“You shouldn’t play that game,” Alex chastises her, though she’s guilty of doing the exact same thing, and not fifteen minutes previous. “I’ve done it, and it’s hell. What-ifs are for people with simpler lives than ours.”

“Is this hell, then?” Astra returns. “This… in-between? I returned to Krypton, and it was everything I’d ever dreamed. And you come here, a place with… good memories for you, perhaps?”

“It’s where I grew up,” Alex shrugs. “Not Midvale, or even the house, specifically, but the beach… I never had any worries out here. I couldn’t disappoint anyone when I was on my board. I love Kara, and I love being her sister, but to me, when I was little, I’d go out there to escape from everything,” Alex gestures toward the ocean and lays her head against Astra’s shoulder. She smiles, feeling lips press against the crown of her head. “My father wasn’t dead and my best friend didn’t hate me and Kara was just a normal kid… mom didn’t pressure me and I never got rejected from the City University of Metropolis. I never picked up a bottle and my thesis passed and…and I think I let myself believe someone could love me.”

“Oh, you are so easy to love, Alexandra.”

“Tell that to a 19-year-old with serious self-worth issues,” Alex chirps. “I’d been distilled down to what I could do for so long. I never thought… I never thought _I_ was enough, just me, just being. Not being exceptional, or perfect, or… I don’t know. I thought I always had to be productive. But some days, out there,” Alex gestures grandly and sighs. “Everything was easier on the water.”

“Was there ever anyone with you?”

“Everyone that mattered was always within reach,” Alex acknowledges. “But I bet that if we walk up the path to the house, my mom won’t be in there with toasted PB&Js. And Kara won’t be going through my CD collection, trying to find something that doesn’t grate on her nerves. There’s no one here but us, Astra, because I don’t think this is the final stop. It’s somewhere people go when they’re not really as dead as they should be.”

“You’re still living, then?” Astra surmises. “I cannot believe I didn’t think to ask such important questions when we were on Krypton. I believed we had more _time_.”

Alex turns and presses her nose into Astra's uncovered shoulder, kissing the hard bone there. She eventually picks her head back up, and tacks on her own suspicions:

“I think… I think when we die, we go home. Whatever that means to each of us,” Alex tries to put words to all the strange thoughts swirling in her head. “But who might be there to welcome you, I guess… that depends on whether we make it or not. I like to think that if I lived a good enough life, if I did even just a little bit of good for Kara, or for National City, that dad would be up there blaring 10CC and telling me not to drip on the kitchen tile.”

They sit in silence for a while, huddled and hot. Alex wonders how long Astra will allow her the indulgence before she pulls back from the human sweat. It appears that in both afterlives, Astra is powerless; no less exceptional, but susceptible to waterlogged lungs and the rather mundane inconvenience of perspiring.

“I would hope Alura might forgive me,” Astra confesses eventually. “Not the High Council, and not the planet. I need no consolation from them. But Alura… I wish we had not ended as we did.” Astra crawls to her legs and then to her feet, swatting indiscriminately at the sand collected on her thighs.

Only now that she’s standing does Alex notice her attire; just as she had been gifted Kryptonian robes, Astra has been supernaturally adorned with… well, it’s beach appropriate.

The plain sarong tied at her hip flows black as midnight. But the knotted fashion exposes her entire muscular leg, pale skin melding into black fabric that’s sprinkled with sand. Then there’s— there’s _abs_ , abs and ribs and a handful of a waist topped off with a black bikini halter that almost leaves Alex drooling. Unfair, is what it is, that even in the afterlife Astra can render her so utterly helpless.

“Show me your utopia, then,” Astra extends her hands and hoists Alex up, brushing at the sand collected on her wet suit and body. “Whatever passes for Rao’s Light in your—damn, I hate _sand_.”

“I can see that,” Alex answers, inching closer as Astra works over her body. “But it’s doing wonders for me.”

“Your overconfidence is not amusing,” Astra grumbles.

“Neither is your lying,” Alex smirks, kissing her deeply, moving her tongue in a circular pattern against Astra’s lips, mimicking the motion of her thumb rubbing at Astra’s hipbone.

“Hmmm!” Astra protests, backing away. “We will not be having sex out here.”

“Why not?” Alex asks, leading Astra down from the sandier portion of land near the dunes to the wet, solid tract of shoreline. “You’re dying, I’m dying, we need to make the most of every opportunity.”

“You’ll not die if I have anything to say about it,” Astra gripes.

“Only you would tell me I couldn’t,” Alex smirks.

“I meant it as an order, soldier,” Astra teases, standing with Alex in the seafoam, entranced by the way the wet grains and residual shell pieces _swoosh_ round her ankles.

“Of course, General,” Alex bobs her head, thinking of when she’ll be pulled back to Kara’s apartment, and hoping, hoping as Kara would want her to… that she will be ready.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They sit wrapped in a blanket on the beach, a pile of driftwood arranged in a pyramid between them and the ocean. The fire burns hot and high like an aria, smoky melodies on the night sky. Alex thinks she’ll be leaving soon if Kara is keeping the same time they do—her sister should be coming back to the apartment once night falls.

 

She’s leaning back into Astra’s embrace, situated between her spread legs with her arms wrapped tight round her body. Astra places kisses against her shoulder and asks questions about constellations; she listens while Alex tells her myths associated with each. Alex recounts the mythology of Gemini, the twins, burning together in the heavens per the request of one brother, to show solidarity and loyalty and love toward the other. It is a rare occasion where mythology aligns with astronomy, for the the two twinkling stars that comprise the constellation—Castor and Pollux—are named for the twins who sparked the story in the first place. Astra buries her face in Alex’s neck from behind and listens as Alex wraps it up; she wonders if Astra can feel the rumbles from her chest, the vibrations of her voice thrumming into Astra’s own body. When she finishes, Alex shifts to the side and looks back over her shoulder, stealing a kiss from Astra in the firelight.

Astra’s fingers dig into the muscles on her shoulders, releasing the tension of a day spent in some otherworldly realm. Her hands are relaxing and warm and oh-so-tempting, the action similar enough to an episode from earlier that afternoon (circling back to Astra’s adamant declaration that they would not be having sex on the beach).

_However._

Such an order hadn’t stopped Alex from dragging Astra along the path that winded up the cliff and back to her childhood home. They made the cursory investigation, and, as Alex suspected, there was not a living thing in sight. Not even Chuck, her mother’s ancient tabby cat, watched out from his signature perch at the window.

After a quick search of the premises, Alex had taken Astra out back to the outdoor shower. Curtained off by heavy, burlap-like curtains, the exposed PVC piping attached to a few yard-sale scavenged shower heads had two settings: frigid and scalding. It had been a hasty construction job Jeremiah threw together for her and Kara during the preteen years.

They were on the beach constantly, but Eliza had absolutely had it with sand in the house. The water temperatures had never really bothered Kara, and Alex hadn’t told her parents that it bothered her (just an example of another minor concession made not to cause trouble for anyone, to quietly bear the weight of sacrifice). Jeremiah had tried to adjust the temperatures once they found out the ramshackle shower wasn’t safe temperature-wise, but without the traditional water heater regulator attached—an expense they couldn’t really afford, not for a slap-dash job on an outdoor sand shower—Jeremiah had instead rerouted the hose which perpetually burbled lukewarm liquid. Alex used it when Kara would wash the sand off in the shower, and the system worked well enough between them.

But in this dreamy deathscape, because they are not-quite-dead, temperatures are _felt_ , but they are not harmful. Alex knows she’s perspiring, knows she’s hot under steamy water, but it doesn’t _bother her_ , not like the heat of the day bothers Astra. Perhaps it is because this is _her version_ of an afterlife, when Astra’s had been a healthy, thriving Krypton. Then again, Astra has been living without temperature effects for almost ten years; the heightened degrees of any human utopia might be shocking to her.

Alex feels the humidity and watches cloudy steam puffs gather as the water scalds their bare skin; but she feels that pain like she feels the chest wound that pierced so deeply her lung collapsed—which is to say, she doesn’t feel it at all. She knows, just from the amount of blood she saw spilling on the warehouse floor, that the Parumite probably nicked a central artery or worse—her aorta—during the fight.

But battle scars, Alex’s and Astra’s both, hadn’t really mattered much earlier, tucked away in that sand-strewn shower when Astra had unzipped the rest of Alex’s wetsuit and worked it down her legs. She’d untied the sarong and folded it in eighths, so that it lay thick in Astra’s hand, about a foot of soft rectangular area that Astra could use to dry her face with.

Or drop flat on the sopping ground.

Right in front of Alex’s feet.

Astra had followed the fabric and sank down to the sandy wet floor and placed her knees on the material, tugging Alex’s swimsuit bottoms down on her journey. All Alex remembers is a haze of water pressure and tongue; she’d leaned heavily against the plywood used to support the shower rigging and gripped the white PVC piping with one hand, then buried her fingers in Astra’s curls with the other. Everything tasted salty and her chest hurt but Astra kept her upright, licking into her and tasting her like she’d done long ago, when she was inhabiting Alex’s body at her bedside, pumping in and out and fucking slowly and sucking and humming and—and—and—

And exploding, like Alex did shortly after Astra dug her nails into the flesh of her ass. Alex felt herself tense and fidget at her climax, and had gasped against the streams of water pouring out of the leaky shower head. The chords in her neck strained skyward as her head thudded back against the wooden panel. Astra had sucked through the convulsions as water poured over their nude forms, washing away cum and sand and swirling it down the drain.

“Uhnf… oh fuck…”

Astra had then licked a sinful line up from Alex’s center toward her lips that should’ve sent them both straight to hell, but at the end of it all, Astra remarked that they were now free of the infernal sand and had patted Alex’s slack jaw teasingly.

She’d slipped out of the shower and left Alex to her heaving recovery, and had even possessed the wherewithal to prepare a pot of coffee for them both to split once Alex gathered herself and stumbled into the kitchen. It took all of four seconds to get her bearings, because Astra was standing on tiptoes in her childhood home, opening and shutting cabinets, her bare legs on display for only Alex to see—since they seemed to be the only two in this strange limbo-world. Alex had watched Astra pull two mugs down and pad over toward the coffee pot.

“Astra,” Alex had husked, observing the woman, in _this_ location, feeling very strange about her childhood home housing a pantsless Kryptonian general. “What are you wearing?”

“I found it in your old room. At least, I believe it was once yours,” Astra had explained. “There was a lot of black in there, but this one was… I’m unsure of a proper adjective. _Beachy_ , perhaps.”

Alex had nodded and redirected Astra from her mission in the kitchen. She’d sat on the couch and beckoned Astra towards her, tapped either side of the couch where she perched and waited. Astra, brilliant at reading such subtle signals, had straddled her and ground down into her, her chest heaving under the faded _Ocean Avenue_ t-shirt Alex loved more than she’d ever admit to Kara. When Astra had reached for the hem of the garment to pull it overhead, Alex had staid her hand.

“Leave it on,” Alex had instructed, biting her lip at the sight. “I might never get this chance again,” she’d mumbled, thumbing Astra’s clit as she slid two fingers into her with no further preamble.

Astra had grinned as Alex filled her and began rocking atop her, fisting her hands in Alex’s hair while Alex kissed her breathless.

But they’d talked that afternoon, too, once their libidos had been sated. They didn’t want to make the same mistakes they’d made on Krypton, knowing now that Alex’s physical body was in some weird recovery in a medical wing at the DEO. It took paper and pen and correcting each other, but they eventually scrawled out everything they could about this bizarre situation, and they boiled it down to five major facts:

 

  1. Both of them were sort-of dead.
  2. Both of them could haunt the person who had touched their blood at the moment of their “deaths”. 
    1. There was always a Kryptonian involved in the deaths.
    2. _Blood bonds us all_ seemed like a clue. It was a tenet that originated in the more remote provinces of Krypton, at least to Astra’s knowledge, but she never assumed the phrase possessed an air of mysticism to it.
  3. The afterlife—or purgatory—is subjective. The location is predicated on Alex’s and Astra’s deepest desires, on what they most value. Healthy Krypton. Relaxing beach. Some sense of _home._
  4. They cannot voluntarily leave purgatory. They are only able to return to the apartments—Kara’s in Alex’s case, Alex’s apartment in Astra’s—when the person who touched their blood returns home. _Home_. Another element that plays into the purgatory construction, as well as the stipulation that their ghostly forms only appear once the living, blood-soaked person returns to the place they call _home_.
  5. When they are in purgatory, they are able to remember their time spent haunting reality. When they are in reality, they cannot remember purgatory.



 

It is the last fact that they wrestle with the hardest; Alex had not known she’d spent time on Krypton when she was watching the conversation between Lucy and Kara play out in Kara’s studio. It was only because of Astra’s haunting that she even put together that something similar had happened to _her_. Which begs the question…

Can Astra’s spirit still exist in reality without Alex’s body there to… what would be the proper wording for it? Summon her? Connect with her? If Alex forgets every rendezvous shared with Astra in the liminal space, how can she tell Kara what’s going on? And that’s assuming she gets a handle on the corporeal stuff; her misadventure with the pen on Kara’s coffee table had lasted an abysmal six hours with very little to show for her efforts. And what of purgatory? Will they hop between Midvale and Krypton until Alex is revived, and, if she _isn’t_ permanently damaged, how soon will she be able to get back to the apartment? How long will Astra have to stay on Krypton by herself?

Maybe that’s the thing about purgatory. A little bit of heaven—Krypton was as perfect as Astra once imagined it could be; a little bit of hell—there was no one there to share it with.

“So,” Astra finally says, nuzzling at Alex’s ear. Alex stops thinking about all the progress they made that afternoon, and returns her attention to Astra's address at the fireside. “You’ll do the visualization exercises like I told you?”

“They didn’t work for you,” Alex grumbles.

“Because I didn’t exactly have a frame of reference for materializing out of spiritual ether, Alexandra,” Astra quips.

“What was it, then, that finally tipped you into the realm of touch?”

“You acknowledged me,” Astra answers, undoubtedly thinking back to when Alex had seemingly been talking to thin air. “Well, that was when you were less than stable. You were still drinking heavily, but I had some investment in your sobriety since you were the only person I was able to see. Yours the only apartment I was able to inhabit.”

“We know that’s because of the blood.”

“You _believe_ its because of the blood,” Astra corrects.

“It’s the best theory that we have.”

“The only theory—”

“But the problem is, I don’t want to have to wait until Kara gets as bad as I got to start interfering at her apartment. We need to talk to her ASAP.”

“Do you truly think he’ll be able to read your mind while you are incapacitated?” Astra asks her. Alex hears the uncertainty but she also feels it, notices in the way Astra holds her tighter and drops her voice, turns almost imperceptibly into Alex’s cheek.

“In many comas, there’s brain activity,” Alex answers her. “And Kara didn’t say anything about a TBI. Just a collapsed lung and a lot of blood loss. Only… severe trauma. At the end of the day, rest is probably the one thing my body needs. And if I get back to it, I might not be able to go back to the apartment right away. You might be… stranded for a while.”

Astra doesn’t answer immediately. Alex listens to her phantom breathing and the crackle of the driftwood from the fire smoldering near her feet. It dips and harmonizes with the ocean waves, with the westward wind—sounds in a world carved from the deepest recesses of her heart. Alex threads her fingers through Astra’s and sighs, wondering why her hand feels a little less heavy than it had moments ago.

“Stranded,” Astra eventually murmurs behind her. “Alex, I… I must tell you something.”

“Yeah?” Alex sits up and turns so she can see Astra’s face in orangey shadow, glowing like an ember discarded in the sand.

“When you faded from me… you realize I have returned to Krypton many times over, alone, when you would leave the apartment and go to work?”

“Yeah, I… we get that now. We just don’t remember it, right?”

“Correct. But the time spent in these limbos, these _purgatories_ , that you call them…I don’t think you understand how lonely it is.” Astra looks away and the blanket slips from her shoulders, that old Yellowcard t-shirt neckline so stretched out Alex really should’ve thrown it away. But she loved the album so much she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“I didn’t know I was going to be pulled back to Kara’s,” Alex furrows her brow. “I mean, it’s almost good that I got hurt, right? Now we know more than we did.”

“How can you think that your injuries could ever be justified?” Astra asks her. “I would tear the Parumite apart if… if I could.”

“We’re going to get your body back.”

“You don’t know that, Alex.”

“We _are_ ,” Alex affirms, “and you’ll never have to watch me fade away from you again.”

“Alex…” Astra shakes her head, clenches her jaw, then looks skyward. She blinks back tears and hunches in on herself, but doesn’t protest when Alex readjusts so that she's sat on her knees right in front of her.

Alex wants to tell her it’s okay, but such hollow comforts won’t do what she needs them to. She’s said them before and Astra has smiled, unbelieving, and has taken the words despite their uselessness.

“I’ve wandered a thriving Krypton by myself for countless hours, never ending nights, the loneliness only broken in the brief instances that I saw you. And then… and then I had you with me for a moment, Alexandra,” Astra brushes Alex’s hair away from her cheek. “And when you disappeared, I… I didn’t understand. You were my only link to the world so I—Rao forgive me—”

Astra chokes on her words and pivots away from the fire as she cries. Alex feels desperation press heavily upon her shoulders and remembers her own impotence, remembers what it felt like to have no solace save her bottles and her oblivion.

“Astra… you know you can tell me if… if you—”

“I rode the lift to the tallest tower of the highest building,” Astra answers, all cried out apparently, because her face cracks like desiccated land during a wildfire. “I’d taken the robes you had worn that day… the white ones? With your name embroidered in the script?”

“They were very beautiful,” Alex says, wiping at the one remaining tear stubbornly clinging to Astra’s chin. “Just like you.”

“And I waited… I waited for hours, Alexandra. I knew you were preparing for the mission. I knew that if you had come to me you must have been injured and I’ve never had anyone with me before. Never been in anyone else’s afterlife, or… or _hell_ , whatever you call this beach,” Astra flings a careless hand out toward the water. “And… and I’d thought you had died,” Astra says. “I thought you had passed and I had no point of reference, no understanding of what to do other than… than to try and follow you.”

“Oh.” Alex pulls Astra’s head closer and kisses her forehead, kisses it again, whispers against her wrinkled brow: “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Astra takes three deep breaths and places a hand over Alex’s heart. She wonders if Astra can feel anything, wonders if they maintain a pulse in limbo. Astra’s chest heaves and Alex senses her shattering.

“I did what I would not allow you to do,” Astra whispers, too fast, so fast Alex almost mishears. “I jumped.”

Alex can’t hold her any closer without breaking her spine. She thinks of the months Astra’s been materializing in her apartment; thinks of her consciousness trapped on that lonely shell of a planet that Astra had fought for, had _killed_ for, had been so desperate to save that she defied those closest to her. Alex thinks of all the nights she lay huddled on the couch, listening to Astra’s reluctant stories about Streld, the desert planet, with red and purple sands that rubbed her throat so raw her tongue bled. She recalls the stories of rebel shells exploding over Astra’s head when her unit was moored, surrounded by quicksand on all sides, and what she’d sacrificed to get them out of there. She thinks of Astra the foot soldier, her triggers, her traumas, and her victories despite them all.

Is it egomaniacal to chock up Astra’s final straw to her absence? That without someone (her? maybe Astra loves her enough to follow her into eternity), Astra would deem it her final trial and leap into nothingness.

All for love of her.

“When I awoke in the waters this morning…” Astra mumbles, “I could not…”

“Shh…” Alex murmurs, tilting Astra’s face up to her, dipping down to kiss her. When she pulls away, her cheeks are wet from crying, from mourning her love who isn’t gone—who is not gone _yet_. “Astra, I…I…” she can’t form the words she needs and Astra has no other sins to divulge. Alex props her chin atop the crown of her head while Astra nuzzles into her neck; she stares off into the night and must surely be hallucinating after that jarring disclosure, because her other loss is staring her down from the south side of the sea.

Alex blinks, confounded, not wanting to release Astra but…

It can’t be…

“ _Dad?”_ Alex gasps, and she wonders if Astra can feel her shaking.

“Alexandra?”

Alex removes herself from where she’s piled onto Astra’s lap but keeps hold of her hand, staring at some mirage of her father as it shrugs, waving bashfully near the rocky outcropping she and Kara would climb over as children.

“Astra, do you see—”

“ _Alura!_ ” Astra cries, her focus turned toward the north, drawing her away from the grip Alex felt the need to keep between them. “Alex, Alex do you see her?”

Alex doesn’t think she will. She thinks of the cruelties of in-betweens, the uncertainties and stillness of what they’ve learned in their various stints in purgatory. Brief. Endless.

_Painful_.

Jeremiah to the south.

Alura to the north.

Alex and Astra, holding hands in between, the ash and embers fizzling as the stars burn overhead.

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so first off i gotta apologize for putting this off but for new years resolution (lol I know this aint gonna work yall) i'm trying to write 500 words a day... i figure if i can at least keep this up for january and february it means i might finish up some shorter wips and get the next chapter out on mermaid!au bless it...also, shoutout to my fellow geminis in the fic. castor and pollox were serious bros
> 
> ***For your consideration*** 
> 
> i know there's been a lot of discussion about some of alex's... preferences. At least, from what i've seen of ao3 tags recently. i might be showing my age, but i could really care less if alex is top/bottom/upside down or backwards, but the information i NEED TO KNOW is what she listened to in her punk rock phase. 
> 
> Was she SoCal punk/pop with Yellowcard? Blink182? Good Charlotte pre2003? Sum41? Alien Ant Farm? When she was/a young girl/did Jeremiah take her to the city/to see the marching BAND???? This is IMPORTANT INFORMATION you can't tell me Eliza wasn't just SO ticked because Kara wanted to shop at Limited Too and Alex wanted Hot Topic and eventually they compromised on Aeropostle at the mall like... I'd watch the entire spin-off of Danvers sisters growing up together and becoming the sisters we see today :D :D :D
> 
> Oh yeah, comment on the fic if you want XD

**Author's Note:**

> Feeling like this is smuttier and angstier than my standard fare... probs because of Halloween. One more chap on this cuz i'm having a time with my mermaid AU. The struggle is real, but comments make it easier :D
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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